White Racial Identity Development and Religious Orientation

Abstract

, 3 measures of religious orientation, and a demographic questionnaire. A canonical correlation analysis found 3 significant canonical pairs suggesting that higher and more complex racial identity statuses may be positively related to more integrated and flexible forms of religious orientation. Implications for counseling are noted.

College Student Spirituality at a Hispanic Serving Institution

“…Additionally, non-Hispanic Whites, like Cuban Americans, stated they were spiritual and/or believed in God while not adhering strictly to religious institutional orthodoxy. Sciarra and Gushue (2003) find that White college students whose salient racial identity status is at the lower developmental stages have a "rigid" set of conservative religious beliefs. Even though in this study, most non-Hispanic Whites have a strong sense of ethnic identity, none of them, through their interviews exhibited "rigid" religious beliefs and in fact, had similar responses as Cuban Americans.…”

“…Twenty-four percent of Catholics in the U.S. are between the ages of 18 and 29 (p. 32) and fifty-four percent of them are female (p. 33). Sciarra and Gushue (2003), using Helms's six ego identity statuses and its developmental model of White identity and its relationship to religion, find that White college students at PWIs who have a highly developed White identity were associated with more flexibility concerning how they define their religious views (p. 479). Thus, the researchers suggest that college students who rejected racist beliefs and had begun to question differing perspectives were able to have a flexible and open spirituality.…”

“…Other than these studies and the HERI study, only two other studies to date have looked at the relationship between other college student ethnic groups and their identity and spirituality and/or religion. These studies include Constantine, Wilton, Gainor, and Lewis's (2002) study of African American college students and the role spirituality and religion play in their adjustment to college and Sciarra and Gushue's (2003) study of non-Hispanic White identity and religion.…”

Varieties of Group Self-Centeredness and Dislike of the Specific Other

“…However, no study has yet systematically investigated the relationship between ethnocentrism, fundamentalism, and anthropocentrism. A small number of studies that investigated the relationships between some of the constructs suggest that they should be interrelated (e.g., Altemeyer, 1996Altemeyer, , 2003Schultz, Zelezny, & Dalrymple, 2000;Sciarra & Gushue, 2003). However, the relationship between the constructs is not clear because some measures of group self-centeredness, particularly of ethnocentrism, in these studies often also included outgroup negativity.…”

Teacher educators under surveillance at a religious university

“…Sciarra and Gushue (2003) found that participants with higher levels of white racial identity development held more "personally integrated and flexible forms of religious orientation" (p. 479), while those with rigid beliefs possessed lower levels of white racial identity development.…”