No abstract

The durability of racism in the United States continues to inspire critical scholarship about the mechanisms that drive persisting inequalities. Drawing on theories of colorblindness and white ignorance, growing work examines how White people actively deny, revise, or mystify white supremacy, illuminating cultural mechanisms that (re)produce racialized structures. Largely absent from this body of work, however, is the potential role of religion—specifically Christianity—as a cultural system that can inform and legitimize ways of knowing (or not knowing) about racism. Here, we draw on 85 interviews with White Christians (Catholic, Mainline Protestant, and Evangelical Protestant) to analyze how they talk about racism and produce racial knowledge. We show how some White Christians draw on colorblind religious frames and religious frames of diversity and inclusion to inform and legitimize overlapping, sometimes contradictory racial logics that can be deployed across social contexts to produce ignorance about systemic racism. Findings reveal the production of colorblindness as a dynamic process that, under certain conditions, White Christians actively negotiate by using religious frames, producing what we describe as divinized colorblindness.

Within the broad interdisciplinary domain of religious studies, explicit attention to whiteness remains limited. Not only does this situation reinforce an analytic division between race and religion, it also works to obscure the racial dimensions of dominant Western forms of religion, particularly Protestant Christianity in the United States, as well as the religious dimensions of white supremacy. Tracing the contours of a body of scholarship on whiteness and religion that has been scattered across a number of fields and disciplinary boundaries, this article explores the role that the racial category of whiteness has played in US religious life and what is gained analytically by exploring the co-imbrication of whiteness and religion. Given persisting racial inequality and white extremism, we argue that whiteness itself needs to be theorized and discussed within the study of religion in ways that do not shy away from explicit discussions of power and racism.

Although religious discrimination in U.S. workplaces appears to be rising, little is known about how different groups of employees perceive discrimination. Here, the authors draw on 194 in-depth interviews with Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and nonreligious employees to examine perceptions of religious discrimination in the workplace. The authors identify several common modes of perceived discrimination, including verbal microaggressions and stereotyping, social exclusion and othering, and around religious holidays and symbols. The authors also find that Christians tend to link perceived discrimination to personal piety or taking a moral stand in the workplace, while Muslims, Jews, and nonreligious people tend to link discrimination to group-based stereotypes and describe a sense of being seen as religiously foreign or other. This study reveals the value of studying groups alongside one another for the fullest picture of workplace religious discrimination and points the way toward further sociological research of how both majority and minority groups perceive discrimination.

Work and faith are significant life commitments for many people. Understanding how people integrate these facets of life is important for scholars, faith leaders, and religious communities. We use data from Faith at Work: An Empirical Study, which includes a U.S. general population survey (n = 13,270) and in-depth interviews. Drawing data from a Christian sub-sample we ask: How do Christians draw on their faith community in relation to work? For those in different social locations, in what ways does talk about work come up in churches? Finally, what work-related challenges do Christians experience, and how do Christians want their churches and pastors to address them? We find that many Christians see faith as a resource for enhancing their work lives but do not often encounter discussion of work at church or talk with pastors about work, though Black congregants are nearly twice as likely as whites to hear their pastors discuss work. Further, specific groups of Christians want their pastors and churches to do more to support them in their work and/or to help them navigate faith in the workplace. They also want churches to better accommodate the needs of working people at church, so they can more fully participate.