The Politics of Religious Prejudice and Tolerance for Cultural Others

ABSTRACT

While some research argues that religious pluralism in the United States dampens conflict by promoting tolerance, other work documents persistent prejudice toward religious out-groups. We address this ambiguity by identifying a distinct cultural style that structures Americans’ attitudes toward religious others: support for public religious expression (PRE). Using data from a recent nationally representative survey, we find a strong and consistent relationship between high support for PRE, negative attitudes toward religious out-groups, and generalized intolerance. Addressing the previously overlooked public aspects of religion and cultural membership in the United States has important implications for studies of civic inclusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Civil society
• political culture
• prejudice
• religion
• tolerance

Acknowledgments

A previous version of this article was presented at the 2015 Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association in Chicago. The authors would like to thank Jack DeWaard, Michele Dillon, and three anonymous reviewers at the Sociological Quarterly for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this article.

Funding

The authors appreciate the generous support for data collection and research assistance given by the National Science Foundation (grant nos. 1258926 and 1258933) and the Edelstein Family Foundation.

Notes

1. Full factor analysis results are available from the lead author upon request.

2. Full results are available from the lead author upon request. One-factor model: likelihood ratio 399.12, RMSEA .098, CFI .964, TLI .940, SRMR .028, CD .890. Two-factor model: likelihood ratio 233.08, RMSEA .076, CFI .979, TLI .964, SRMR .023, CD .959.

3. Models employ list-wise deletion for complete cases on all variables, with about 9 percent of cases missing in each model. We used a logistic regression model with flags for missing cases that did not identify any substantive relationships between missing cases on independent variables and our dependent variables.

Additional information

Funding

The authors appreciate the generous support for data collection and research assistance given by the National Science Foundation (grant nos. 1258926 and 1258933) and the Edelstein Family Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Evan Stewart

Evan Stewart is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Minnesota (UMN). His research focuses on political and cultural sociology, with a particular interest in the political impact of religious change and the growing nonreligious population in the United States. His work has appeared in Social Forces, Social Currents, Secularism and Nonreligion, and the Annual Review in the Sociology of Religion. In pursing this research, he has worked as an Edelstein Fellow with the American Mosaic Project and an interdisciplinary doctoral fellow with the UMN Center for the Study of Political Psychology.

Penny Edgell

Penny Edgell is a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota. She received her doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1995. A cultural sociologist, she studies contemporary American religion. Her research has appeared in Congregations in Conflict and Religion and Family in a Changing Society, as well as American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Social Problems, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Social Currents, Sociology of Religion, and the Annual Review of Sociology. She is currently serving a term as the associate dean for social sciences in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota.

Jack Delehanty

Jack Delehanty is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Minnesota. His research examines the cultural underpinnings of social movements and political organizations, and has appeared in the American Journal of Cultural Sociology and Sociology of Religion.