Religion and Racism

 By Jenny Donati

“Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.”

This is how Jesus of Nazareth — of “red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight” fame — is reported to have responded to a Greek woman who begged him to heal her daughter of a demonic possession (Mark 7:25-30)*. Here, and in many other stories, the Bible indicates that “the chosen people” are superior to, and should come before, “the dogs”. A new study shows that the same mindset persists in 21st-century America; increased religiosity is linked tightly with increased racism. Researchers believe this is because of the “us” vs. “them” mindset inherent in religion.

Published in the February issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review, the study takes the form of a meta-analysis, or a study of studies. The results of a number of studies are collected and re-analyzed.

This study, focusing on American Christians — the researchers are American and the dominant religion in the United States is Christianity — reviewed all studies on religion and race conducted from the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the present. More than half were conducted after 1990.

The abstract, in part:

a strong religious in-group identity was associated with derogation of racial out-groups. Other races might be treated as out-groups because religion is practiced largely within race, because training in a religious in-group identity promotes general ethnocentrism, and because different others appear to be in competition for resources. In addition, religious racism is tied to basic life values of social conformity and respect for tradition . . . The authors failed to find that racial tolerance arises from humanitarian values, consistent with the idea that religious humanitarianism is largely expressed to in-group members. Only religious agnostics were racially tolerant.

Study co-author Wendy Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at the University of Southern California, expanded upon the abstract:

Religious groups distinguish between believers and non-believers and moral people and immoral ones. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the strongly religious people in our research, who were mostly white Christians, discriminated against others who were different from them — blacks and minorities.

All religions offer a moral group identity, and so across world religions — including Buddhism, Hinduism, Muslim, Judaism and Christianity — the religious ingroup is valued over outgroups.

One would hope that, as we move toward a more multicultural society, and as racism is less socially acceptable, that open bigotry would be in decline. Overall, it is; the prejudices remain, but are kept more close to the vest, particularly among certain groups:

The effect stays significant even in recent years. For people who are religious for conservative reasons [respect for tradition, social conventionalism], they have become less racist in recent years as racism has become less socially acceptable. But even they are still significantly racist, just that the effect has reduced in magnitude.

Further, Wood said, the more devout the religionist, the more extreme the racism.

The opposite is also true; Wood and her co-authors found that the less religious the person, the less racial prejudice is manifested.

One possible surprise? We are all familiar with the stereotype of the fundamentalist Christian ranting against all sorts of people, and assume that she is more likely to harbor racist attitudes than the friendly, rational-seeming Episcopalian next door. Not so.

While fundamentalists were more outspoken with their bigotries, Wood, et al found that mainstream Christians held the same prejudices, while paying lip service to racial tolerance.

This study is particularly timely during the rise of the Tea Party movement. While it started out as a broad-based, grassroots movement of people enraged by bailouts (starting, if you recall, with anger at Bush’s bailout), Judson Phillips’ for-profit Tea Party Nation has become a nearly all-white Christian Nation movement regularly accused of racism.

Could this be why this study has been ignored by all the mainstream media? I can certainly understand Fox News giving it a pass for this reason.

Maybe it’s been passed over by the other news outlets for the simple reason that it’s not something people want to hear. People don’t want to be told that being religious means they are most likely bigots . . . even as they sing in their self-segregated churches, “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.“

*As I have been accused of misquoting the Bible, allow me to reproduce the story in question here.

Mark 7:25-30 (KJV)

25 For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet:

26 The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter.

27 But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.

28 And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.

29 And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.

30 And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed.

Article Discussion:

Baconsbud:
I think that one of the reasons this study wouldn't get much media attention is those within the media are afraid of racial issues being given time on TV. They don't mind when it seems like the race card is being played but when it shows that most that seem to have gotten past the racial issue are actually still just as bigoted, would cause problems with their income. What would happen if you were to tell many of those that are helping you to get though life, they are racist? I figure they would get all huffy and stop helping you. They will admit to themselves you are right but they won't admit it in public.
 
Aaronbieber:
That is, if anything, one of the most compelling reasons to believe that "news" on television is scarcely news at all. It's "current events theater."

Bizchaplain:
Jenny apparently isn't the least bit ashamed of herself as she misquotes Scripture. Perhaps she merely demonstrates gross ignorance of the Scripture and its context.
 
Jenny:
How exactly is this a misquote?

25 For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet:
26 The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter.
27 But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.
28 And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.
29 And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.
30 And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed.
As regards the rest of your comments . . . I assume you believe that your all-powerful god is incapable of controlling the text of his own book. Sure, Gore Vidal can do it, but your god can’t demand a revision.

Bizchaplain:
In the first place, the woman was NOT a Greek. She was a Canaanite, or a Syrophoenician. These were the ones who worshiped Baal, and they had initiated the racial contempt toward Jews. The Canaanites called Jews "dogs" and the Jews merely returned the favor.

In the second place, the standard Greek word (Mark was written in Greek) was "kuon" which was used in reference to the dogs of the street that ate Jezebel's body. Mark didn't use that word, but he used the affectionate term "kunarion" which referred more to household pets. Not that it was much better, but it had a softer term than the cultural epithets of the other.

Third, while the cultures were different, there was no racial component to these epithets and there was none in Jesus' use of the term with the woman. Rather, Jesus was giving the woman the opportunity to demonstrate a faith lacking among his own people.

As long as we have enemies of the Christian faith and of Christians in general, we will meet with those who take cheap shots at our Scriptures and at the way we appropriate these Scriptures in our lives. One of those cheap shots is the ready-fire-aim methodology of pulling out the "race card." It's sad that those who know little about our Scriptures are willing to throw snippets at us when they snipe at us, but it's even more of a sad thing when we Christians don't know enough of our Scriptures to refute the cheap attacks.
A message to Jenny is that we will apply our own Scriptures to judge ourselves, but thanks for your offer to help.

Fugue:
Unless you're quoting the Gospel of Mark in the original Hebrew (possibly Greek), from a first edition known to have been written by Mark himself, any quote is as likely to be a misquote as not.

Baconsbud:
Where are you getting the information that someone named Mark actually wrote the Gospel Mark? You might want to check to see what theologists actually say about the Gospels.

JennyD:
. . . how does any of your extended comment relate to the subject matter of the article, anyway? You say nothing about the research demonstrating more religiosity = more racism.

How does your comment address the fact that Jesus used a derogatory term to refer to people outside of his "in-group", and said that "the children" should come first, before "dogs", whether they are "good" dogs or "bad" dogs being irrelevant?

Zeus:
Oh,hush chap. your religion is based on fear you would sit here and make these remarks to defend slavery, degrading women, and bigotry if you were given those scriptures. Look at all the religiously motivated violence “for gods” when will you finally come to terms when a person kills for scripture it is religiously motivated period. Same with the hate you preach to others who don’t accept your fairy tales, fear is all you know disguised as love. Love me or else. That is not a choice. That is an abusive boyfriend you keep making excuses for, which is quiet pitiful.

Cristian:
Charles, you took the introductory paragraph, found some theological fault with it, and clung to it, which I suspect you hope will spare you the need to address the actual data, the results of the study, the real point of the article. Is this an attempt at diversion, or a simple omission? To a lot of people, theological arguments are as relevant as astrological arguments, or arguments about alchemy: incredibly elaborate, involved and detailed speculation with no real bearing in the real world, serving only to deflect attention from shit that actually matters.

Xalem:
Reading the comments by Zeus above, one can see that a fervent atheist, like a fervent believer, can be very prejudicial and hateful. It is not the belief system that causes the hate, it is that people who are naturally disposed to hatred grab onto beliefs to justify the hatred. Even fervent atheists grab onto beliefs (beliefs about how destructive religion is) and treat the target of their anger as infantile. The Christian ethic "love your neighbor, love your enemy" should prevent racism, but it doesn't, because hatred is too powerful for a belief system to stop it. Any belief system, even democracy, even humanism, even modernity, even secularism, none of these prevented Abu Graib.

Baconsbud:
How do you get hate from what Zeus said. I probably would have said it a little differently but it would have come out as the same. Does that mean because I believe christianity is the main problem within the USA, I hate all christians? If you believe it does mean that then you must be using a different definition of what hate means.

ImaLionRarRarRar:
Xalem, the destructive nature of religion is not a belief, but a fact proven over and over throughout history. If people who are naturally disposed to hatred latch on to religion for justification, then why should I, or any person who has the capacity for love over hate, want to associate themselves with it? I was raised as a Christian, and attended a fundamentalist Christian school for 12 years, and I can say that my personal experiences have left me with nothing but bitterness for the religion. The blatant bigotry and hypocrisy displayed by 90% of the people around me was disgusting to be quite honest. I am not an atheist, but I am certainly no Christian. I guess if you had to label me it would be agnostic.

This is not an argument against God, but rather against any organized religion that gives people the entitlement for hate, discrimination, bigotry, hypocrisy, irrationality, and the murder of millions and millions of people. I'm not saying that secular lifestyles do not have the capacity to cause harm, but it certainly does not even come close to the horrors committed in the name of religion.
I think atheists have a right to treat religious people childishly, but only when their arguments are so similarly irrational, close minded and temper-tantrum prone as that of a child's. If anything the anger comes from the frustrations of trying to have a mature, logic based discussion with people so unwilling to concede, let alone listen to obvious rationality.

We should love our neighbors and enemies because it is the right thing to do, not because Jesus said so.

IamB:
"Only religious agnostics were racially tolerant." I appreciated this because it addresses one of the foundational evils of religion… a claim to certainty. In this case, we're talking about a claim to certainty about things that have no basis in a scientific reality. Religion has taught people to accept lying to themselves as a viable remedy for the uncertainty of life and the pain of being powerless victims of a random, physical universe that is utterly incapable of being concerned about an individual. The lie is that they are special and that they are allowed to have special, intimate knowledge about things that no rational person will dare claim to own.

But (and here's the thing), their bible practically commands them to be certain and condemns honest questioning. The agnostic is at least questioning him or herself… at least accepting the possibility that he or she may not honestly claim certainty about who god is, what he wants or how he wants us to conduct our lives.

When you give yourself license to lie to yourself, you surrender your ability to detect your own biases.

So no surprise that they will not recognize themselves in this article.

Mike_Daniels:
A precondition for faith is NOT knowing.

If God is omniscient, and thus knows all, how can He have...

Mike_Daniels: 
I appreciate that you love all people. That's wonderful! But God hates them; the Bible says so...

Forgiveness:
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Forgiveness:
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Mike_Daniels:
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