White Christians Are More Racist Than Non-Religious People, Claims Researcher
By Val Wilde, July 30, 2020

Given the common association between Christianity and conservatism, especially in these political times, it seems intuitive to expect white evangelicals to hold more racist views and beliefs than unbelievers.

Never content to rest on intuitive assumptions about the religious, Robert P. Jones has done the research to confirm it, and it’s true: White Christians are more likely to be racist, he announced in an article on NBC News’ opinion platform, Think.

Jones is the CEO and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Himself a practicing Christian, he has spent more than two decades studying the relationship between one’s religious affiliation and their beliefs, perceptions, and values. He says the pattern has been emerging for years.

As an example, he cites a 2018 PRRI survey: In it, seven in ten white evangelicals denied the role of structural racism in police killings of Black men, dismissing the events as isolated incidents. A smaller majority also argued that systemic barriers had nothing to do with higher rates of poverty in racialized communities — those people just needed to try harder.

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So it’s not that religion inherently causes racism, says Jones. Rather, the racism that existed in American society through history impacted the development of American social institutions, and that includes religion.