Ultimate Hypocrisy

As incongruous as the results are, they sound fairly accurate to me.

From the Center for Inquiry...

The February issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review has published a meta-analysis [conducted by researchers at Duke and USC] of 55 independent studies conducted in the United States which considers surveys of over 20,000 mostly Christian participants. Religious congregations generally express more prejudiced views towards other races. Furthermore, the more devout the community, the greater the racism.

We also read this additional fascinating conclusion from the authors' summary: "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."

Humanistic values, such as equal dignity and rights for all humanity, are often professed by many Christian denominations. But does this preaching make any difference to their members' actual prejudices? Apparently not.

This study finds that a denomination's demand for devout allegiance to its Christian creed overrides any humanistic message. By demanding such devotion to one specific and dogmatic Christianity, a denomination only encourages its members to view outsiders as less worthy.