UNITED BY FAITH? RACE/ETHNICITY, CONGREGATIONAL CONTEXTS, AND BELIEFS ABOUT RACIAL INEQUALITY IN AMERICA.

Previous research has found that Americans evidence deep and intractable racial/ethnic divisions concerning their explanations for racial inequality, divisions that are often widened and fortified by religion (Edgell & Tranby 2007; Emerson, Smith, & Sikkink 1999). Yet, little research has been done on what social factors potentially mitigate these divisions. Drawing on contact theory, this article examines the potential of interracial contact within multiracial religious congregations for altering, and ultimately unifying, the attitudes of Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics regarding Black economic disadvantage. Utilizing data from the General Social Survey (GSS) and National Congregations Study (NCS), we find that, relative to those in racially homogenous congregations, Whites who frequent multiracial religious congregations tend to become more structurally-oriented in their explanations for Black-White inequality. By contrast, minorities who attend multiracial congregations do not adopt more anti-structural/individualist explanations for inequality. Rather, we find that regardless of race/ethnicity, attendees of multiracial congregations tend to affirm explanations for Black-White inequality that are similar to, and in some cases more structurally-oriented than, Blacks in racially homogenous congregations. We also demonstrate that these effects are not attributable to selection bias. Based on these findings, we suggest that in order to understand how religion further modifies racial/ethnic differences in racial attitudes, future studies should consider the racial composition of respondents' religious institutions in order to understand potentially differing effects of diverse spaces where Whites are the majority or where racial/ethnic minorities predominate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]