Sociology 3301: Sociology of Religion

Lecture 20: Religion and Race

Early sociologist W.E.B. DuBois, at the turn of the 20th century, said that the problem in the century to come was the problem of the color line. Much has changed since his time, with racial minorities increasing their standing in almost every aspect of life – particularly after the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. Yet racial inequality persists (e.g. on income, socioeconomic status), and the very fact that we can still talk about black and white congregations suggests the legacy, if not the continuity, of religious segregation in many areas.

Over the next two classes we consider the extent to which religious social inequality by race remains today, what accounts for it if it does, and what is being done to help.

Race, Ethnicity, and Religious Identification:

Let’s begin with religious self-identification by members of different racial and ethnic groups. Using Pew Research Center data from 2008, we find considerable differences in religious identification by race and how these are reflected in denominational racial composition. For example, more than ¾ of blacks (78%) are Protestant (including evangelical, mainline, and historically black churches), compared to just over half (53%) of whites and about a quarter of Asians (27%) and Latinos (23%). 24% of Americans are Catholic, but this jumps to 58% of Latinos compared to 22% of whites and 5% of blacks.

If we emphasize religious traditions, we see a large concentration of whites in Judaism, mainline Protestantism, Orthodoxy, Mormonism, and evangelical Protestantism. Beyond historically black churches, blacks are also overrepresented among Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslims. Asians are dramatically concentrated in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Latinos are overrepresented among Catholics and Jehovah’s Witnesses. One way or another, there seems to be a strong link between race/ethnicity and religion in American society.

Such cross-sectional data do not, of course, show changes in religious affiliation by race over time, but other research has shown that, despite much stability in black religious identification there has nevertheless been some loosening of the connection between African Americans and specific denominational affiliations. The American Religion Identification Survey (ARIS) found slight decreases in those identifying themselves as Baptist, mainline Protestant, and Catholic. These were offset by gains in the “Generic Christian” and “none” category. This is not to say that African-Americans are becoming less religious. Even among “nones” they are still highly religious, one 2008 survey reporting that 71% of African American “nones” reporting that religion is very or somewhat important in their lives (compared to 41% of “nones” overall). Thus, most are more properly described as “religious unaffiliated.”

1 U.S. Latinos are increasingly being drawn away from Catholicism toward evangelical Protestantism. 51% of Hispanic evangelicals are converts, and 80% of these are former Catholics (2007). This reflects a worldwide trend, especially prominent in historically Catholic countries in South America.

Yet, in all of this, we must remember that looking at differences at the denominational level obscures racial inequalities at the local congregational level. Racial segregation is even more pronounced when we look at congregational membership.

Racial Segregation in Congregations:

Michael Emerson and his colleagues (2000, 2003, 2005, and 2006) have variously documented the persistent religious racial segregation in American society. He operationalized racially segregated congregations in two different ways: binary and continuous.

First, racially segregated congregations were operationalized in a binary (either/or) fashion. Those in which 80% or more of members are of the same race are considered segregated (or homogenous), with those falling below this threshold are seen as multiracial or mixed. Using nationally representative data on American congregations, they find that 93% are racially homogenous under this measure. Only 7% qualify as multiracial. Adjusting measurements further, it was found that 9 out of 10 American congregations have 90% of their members coming from one racial group, and 4 out of 5 have 95%.

Next, Emerson and his colleagues looked at racially segregated congregations in a continuous fashion by looking at the odds that any two randomly selected members of the congregation will be from different racial groups. This “heterogeneity index” ranges from 0.0 (complete racial homogeneity) to 1.0 (complete heterogeneity). American congregations don’t rank high on this measure of diversity either. The average probability of randomly selecting two members of a congregation from different races is just 0.02 – a 2% chance. This makes congregations far more segregated than even schools or neighborhoods. In fact, they are 10 times less diverse than neighborhoods in which they reside and 20 times less diverse than American schools.

The upshot of Emerson’s work is that no matter how you slice and dice it, religion is the most racially segregated institution in American society.

Explaining Congregational Racial Segregation:

As with racial segregation in society generally, explaining these patterns in a religious context is highly complex. Here I will briefly highlight several explanations for congregational homogeneity and then turn, today and in the next class, to a more extended discussion of the relationship between religion and racial prejudice.

2 First, as noted last class, people often choose to associate with people like themselves (“homophily”). While occurring along class lines, it is even more frequent along racial lines. Nevertheless, flocking together is not always a completely voluntary choice. Racial segregation in congregations, research shows, is more a mix of choice and constraint. As Marx said: “People make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past.” Thus, the black church in America has been an integral part of the black community, is valued by its members and chosen by many of them. Still, its emergence is rooted in slavery and racial discrimination in the 19th century, not simply preference by blacks to be around people like themselves. Indeed, some have called it a “semi-involuntary institution” for this reason.

Immigrant groups also often choose to form and maintain segregated religious congregations when faced with language barriers and other forms of social exclusion. Historically, many Lutheran, Methodist, and Catholic congregations in America conducted worship services in German, Welsh, and Italian, thus going to worship was a comfortable reminder of the home country. This pattern is also evident today in a vast number of Asian immigrant religious communities, where, for example, Christian services are conducted in languages like Korean or Chinese. Like black churches, such Asian ethnic congregations also exemplify the principle of choice under constraint.

Whereas many Asians in America become Christian upon their immigration, other immigrants bring their religion with them. For some, it is impossible to separate their racial/ethnic identity from their religious identity (e.g. Hindus). Thus, when attending an American Hindu temple one will likely find most members being of Indian descent.

Uni-racial congregations are not only created, but also perpetuated by people’s homophilous social networks. As most are recruited into religious groups through family and friendship networks, and these tend to be racially homophilous, recruitment into religious groups is also racially homophilous.

Such explanations apply to congregations from all religious traditions. However, it is also the case that racial homogeneity in religious congregations is not equally distributed across religious traditions. Emerson (2006) estimated that only 5% of Protestant congregations are multiracial, compared to 15% of Catholic and 28% of non- Christian ones. Thus, while all religious traditions are racially segregated, they are not segregated to the same extent. Thus, explanations of racial homogeneity in congregations, therefore, must include religious tradition as a factor.

Insofar as racial or ethnic segregation of religious groups is related to “us and them” categories and thinking, there are important issues raised about the role of religion in transcending or fostering prejudice. Let’s turn to the research on the relationship between religion and prejudice.

3 Religion and Racial Prejudice:

In the 1950’s, studies showed religiously affiliated people to be more prejudiced than nonmembers. Despite Christianity’s claim to enhance fellowship and love, research showed a correlation with bigotry. Some tried to explain this by trying to ferret out contributing aspects of the belief system; others suggesting the influence of a third factor. Once more sophisticated and refined data became available, however, the whole debate changed.

In the 1960’s surveys revealed that while church members were more prejudiced, the most active members were actually less prejudiced than any other group. Earlier studies had lumped everyone together without regard to commitment or participation in the religious community, and results had been skewed in favor of the racial attitudes of the larger number of marginal members. Indeed, studies of those scoring low on racist attitudes find that incompatibility of such views with religious beliefs to be the most frequently cited reason for these liberal attitudes towards others. Similarly, in a cross- national European study, adherence to Christian beliefs was related to low levels of prejudice.

Such findings led to several theories and hypotheses. One asserted that some people are intrinsically, and others extrinsically religious. The former join because their faith is meaningful to them in and of itself. They are committed at the moral level, and the meaning functions of religion are central to them. They take their religion seriously. Extrinsically religious people, on the other hand, tend to join congregations because of secular advantages (e.g. status). Those committed primarily at Kanter’s instrumental and/or affective levels would be extrinsically religious. The belonging, identity, and status functions are especially important for them. They are more likely than the intrinsically religious to score high on measures of racial prejudice.

As research continued it became clear that the variables affecting the relationship between religion and prejudice are complex. Thus, the specific theological orientation of people has been found to be important. In most studies, fundamentalists have been more likely than those of other theological persuasions to oppose civil rights for blacks, though one study shows this has changed in recent years. At the same time, however, the same study did show fundamentalism as a positive predictor of hostility toward homosexuals (Laythe et.al, 2001). For many decades, theological liberals have been shown to be most sympathetic to granting equal rights for minorities, followed by the neo-orthodox and then by the conservatives. One study (Griffin et.al., 1987) even found that intrinsically religious members of one millenarian (end of the world) group were more prejudiced than extrinsics. This suggests that it is not enough to know whether a person is intrinsically religious; one must also understand something about the nature of the meaning system itself before correlations can be predicted. Indeed, Allport (1966) had found that the most prejudiced people were those who were indiscriminately pro- religious, those who agreed with all statements that were in any way supportive of religion, including those that contradicted one another. The desire to be generally pro-

4 religious, but without giving much thought to the specifics, was interpreted as a tendency to conform to whatever was acceptable in the larger society.

Clearly the relationship between religion and racial prejudice is complex. Indeed, it may, in different ways, simultaneously contribute both to tolerance and bigotry.

Racism as a Worldview:

Interestingly, the belief system that views some categories of human beings as biologically or genetically less human than others is a modern phenomenon. Of course, people throughout history have believed that those with different beliefs, values, or styles of life were misguided, stupid, or inferior. Ethnocentrism (prejudice based on differences in cultures) is a universal phenomenon. It is also easy to find occasions in history when “outsiders” have been excluded because they were not of the same lineage. Yet the articulation of a systematic philosophical and allegedly “scientific” statement that divides humans into higher or lower orders of being, however, has been given credence only since the 18th century. Kelsey has traced this, doing an incisive analysis of the modern racist worldview and its fundamental difference from the basic worldview of Christianity.

The key characteristic of racism is that a person’s inherent worth is judged on the basis of his or her genes. The philosophical foundations of racism are naturalistic: a person’s value is understood in terms of that which is below themselves – their animal nature and, specifically, their genes. The quality of a person’s life is determined by ancestry and genetic structure. Persons who are racist feel superior to or of greater worth than someone who has “less human” genetic structure as evidenced by skin and hair color, facial features, etc. In other words, their sense of worth is centered on their genes.

Niebuhr (1960), who uses a broad definition of religion, notes that faith focuses on that which makes our life worth living. He insists that whatever provides one with a sense of worth and meaning is properly termed one’s “god.” Elsewhere he spoke of faith as a trust in that which gives value to the self. In fact, worship refers to a celebration of the center of worth or the center of all other values. Referring to Niebuhr’s ideas, Kelsey (1965) thus went on to explain how racism serves as a faith or worldview.

Kelsey states: “The racist relies on race as the source of his (or her) personal value. Life has meaning and worth because it is part of the racial context. It fits into and merges with a valuable whole, the race. As the value-center, the race is the source of value, and it is at the same time the object of value.” Following from such premises, the logical means to improve humanity is selective genetic breeding and maintenance of the purity of the superior race (eugenics).

Kelsey went on to discuss the worldview of Christian theology. The source of personal worth for the Christian is not found in his or her biological nature but in one’s relationship with God. In this sense, Christian theology has allowed for only one distinction between persons, that between the regenerate and the unregenerate. The means of saving or improving human life is not through biological controls but through

5 divine grace. Humans have worth because of their relationship with that which transcends them, not because of something they inherit through their genes. By contrast, racism assumes some segments of humanity to be defective in their essential being and thereby incapable of full regeneration. The assumed defect is not one of character or spirit but a defect of creation. Biologically racists see “them” as less human.

Of course, there are many people who are racist who still consider themselves to be Christian. Kelsey suggests that such people are, in fact, polytheists: they worship more than one god. The question becomes which of these centers of worth predominates in any given situation. Such people do not have a single worldview that gives unity, coherence, and meaning to life. Most are unaware of and quite unconcerned with such theological contradictions in their outlook, or the fact that they are effectively polytheists whether they know it or not.

The official position of all major American denominations is that Christianity and racism are mutually exclusive. While not always the case, today racism is viewed as a form of idolatry (worship of a false god) that is utterly incompatible with Christian theology – following a line of argument close to that of Kelsey. Nevertheless, despite the fact that racism and Christianity involve assumptions that are logically contradictory and incompatible, the sad fact is that both have historically existed together and have even been intertwined. Thus, next class we will investigate some of the ways that Christendom may have inadvertently contributed to racist thinking.

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