Love Thy Neighbor? Not If He’s Different.

New research reveals that people connected to organized religion are more likely to harbor racial prejudice.

[via Miller-McCune | Cobourg Atheist ]

A study by researchers in the University of Southern California found that, although racism is officially against their teachings, religious people are in fact more racist than agnostics. This “religion-racism paradox,” as 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. Because religion in America is practiced largely along segregated lines, that derogation, and the sense of superiority that drives such diminishment of others, can extend beyond religious differences to race, class and ethnicity.

The study used nearly half a century of data.

Read entire study: “Why Don’t We Practice What We Preach? A Meta-Analytic Review of Religious Racism”