Religion, Race, and Discrimination: A Field Experiment of How American Churches Welcome Newcomers

Abstract

This article reports the results of a nationwide audit study testing how Christian churches welcome potential newcomers to their churches as a function of newcomers' race and ethnicity. We sent email inquiries to 3,120 churches across the United States. The emails were ostensibly from someone moving to the area and looking for a new church to attend. That person's name was randomly varied to convey different racial and ethnic associations. In response to these inquiries, representatives from mainline Protestant churches-who generally embrace liberal, egalitarian attitudes toward race relations-actually demonstrated the most discriminatory behavior. They responded most frequently to emails with white-sounding names, somewhat less frequently to blackor Hispanic-sounding names, and much less to Asian-sounding names. They also sent shorter, less welcoming responses to nonwhite names. In contrast, evangelical Protestant and Catholic churches showed little variation across treatment groups in their responses. These findings underscore the role of homophily, organizational homogeneity, and the costs of racial integration in perpetuating the racial segregation of American religious life.

Field Experiments in Religion: A Dream Whose Time Has Come

“…If so, the researcher can test if treatment effects vary by type of study unit. To illustrate, Wright et al (2015) created an e-mail to send to churches. This e-mail was ostensibly from someone moving to the church's community and looking for a new church.…”

“…A characteristic of the churches was their religious tradition: evangelical, mainline Protestant, or Catholic. Wright et al (2015) tested if church responses to the e-mail varied by Christian tradition. It did.…”

“…Measurement manipulations measure an existing phenomenon without directly changing it. For example, Wright et al (2015) gauged church representatives' reactions to potential visitors of different races, but no attempt was made to change the representatives' attitudes or actions. Change manipulations directly aim to change the study units.…”

“…To illustrate, Wright et al. () created an e‐mail to send to churches. This e‐mail was ostensibly from someone moving to the church's community and looking for a new church.…”

“…It is possible that widely accepted conclusions about religion, based on observational analyses, might be overturned by experimental data. As evidence of this possibility, Wright et al (2015) conducted a field experiment, described more below, that found that mainline Protestant, rather than evangelical, churches discriminated against potential visitors of seemingly different races and ethnicities. This experimental finding contradicted expectations derived from observational studies of race and religion.…”