No surprise here.
Excerpt:
This “religion-racism paradox,” as University of Southern California
social psychologist Wendy Wood explains it, is deeply embedded in
organized religion which, by its very nature, encourages people to
accept one fundamental belief system as superior to all others. The
required value judgment creates a kind of us-versus-them conflict, in
which members of a religious group develop ethnocentric attitudes toward
anyone perceived as different. The study, “Why Don’t We Practice What We Preach? A Meta-Analytic
Review of Religious Racism,” appeared in the journal Personality
and Social Psychology Review.
“Religion creates a very strong sense of a moral right and wrong
within the group,” says Wood. “When you do that, members of the group
will be more likely to derogate anyone who is not part of it.” And
because religion in America is practiced largely along segregated lines
(just 12 percent of U.S. congregations report even a moderate level of
diversity, one study shows) that derogation, and the sense of
superiority that drives such diminishment of others, can extend beyond
religious differences to race, class and ethnicity.
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