How racial resentment relates to political conservatism across different White religious groups

A recent study published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion suggests that racial resentment plays a major role in driving conservative political beliefs among White Americans who are not religiously conservative. While White religious conservatives tend to support right-leaning policies regardless of their racial attitudes, harboring racial resentment provides evidence of a conservative political shift among White religious moderates, liberals, and nonreligious individuals.

Philip Schwadel, a sociology professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, conducted the new study to explore how racial attitudes influence the political leanings of different religious groups. “The research and popular discourse on racism/racial resentment, religion, and politics focuses on how views of race connect white evangelical Christians to conservative politics and the Republican party,” Schwadel said.

“While it is true that white evangelicals and political conservatives are both relatively likely to express racial resentment, that does not mean non-evangelical whites express no racial resentment,” Schwadel told PsyPost. “So, I thought it would be informative to examine how racial resentment explains differences in political affiliations/orientations among various white religious groups, not just evangelicals/conservative Christians.”

To understand this relationship, it helps to look at how experts define modern prejudice. Racial resentment, sometimes called symbolic racism, differs from older forms of discrimination that rely on false ideas of biological inferiority. Instead, this concept describes a belief system suggesting that non-White Americans are solely responsible for their social standing and should overcome disadvantages without any special assistance.

To test his ideas, Schwadel analyzed data from the General Social Survey, a nationally representative questionnaire of adults living in the United States. He focused on responses collected between the years 2002 and 2022 to ensure the data reflected the contemporary political and religious landscape. After filtering the data to include only White respondents and removing incomplete responses, the final sample size included exactly 8,048 individuals.

The researcher measured political orientation using a seven-point scale ranging from extremely liberal to extremely conservative. He also tracked whether participants identified as Republicans. To ensure accuracy, the analysis controlled for many outside factors that might influence voting habits, such as religious service attendance, age, gender, household income, education level, marital status, region of the country, and city size.

To gauge religious conservatism, Schwadel looked at two main factors. First, he examined religious tradition, categorizing participants as evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, Catholics, affiliates of other religions, or unaffiliated with any religion. Second, he assessed views of the Bible by grouping individuals based on whether they believed the text to be the literal word of God, the inspired word of God, or a book of ancient fables.

To measure racial resentment, the study used a combination of four specific survey questions. These questions asked whether Black Americans should have to overcome prejudice without special favors, whether a lack of motivation causes racial inequality, and whether discrimination is to blame for racial disparities. A final question asked participants to rate how hardworking or lazy they perceived different racial groups to be.

The data revealed that White evangelical Protestants and those who view the Bible as the literal word of God tend to be highly politically conservative. “White evangelicals are highly likely to be politically conservative, so much so that there is little difference in the likelihood of being politically conservative between those with higher and lower levels of racial resentment,” Schwadel said. “We refer to this as a ceiling effect.”

“In other words, racial resentment cannot explain differences in the likelihood of being politically conservative among white evangelicals because they are almost all politically conservative,” Schwadel noted. For non-evangelical White Americans, the pattern looks quite different.

“Non-evangelical white Americans, on the other hand, are not particularly likely to be politically conservative,” Schwadel explained. “But, non-evangelical whites with higher levels of racial resentment are far more likely to be politically conservative than non-evangelical whites with lower levels of racial resentment.”

The study provides evidence that among White mainline Protestants, Catholics, affiliates of other religions, and nonreligious individuals, racial resentment is a strong predictor of conservative political views. “Looking at it another way, among those with low levels of racial resentment, white evangelicals are far more likely than white non-evangelicals to be politically conservative,” Schwadel added.

“Among those with high levels of racial resentment, there is little to no difference in the likelihood of being politically conservative between white evangelical and non-evangelical Americans,” Schwadel said. When people in moderate or liberal religious categories express high levels of racial prejudice, their political orientation closely matches the conservatism of evangelical Protestants.

Readers should not misinterpret these findings to mean that White religious conservatives are free from racial resentment. “I want to be clear that white evangelicals are considerably more likely than white non-evangelicals to express racial resentment,” Schwadel said. “It is just that racial resentment doesn’t explain political differences among white evangelicals like it does among other white Americans.”

One limitation is that the study relies on survey data taken at specific points in time. This makes it difficult to determine the exact chain of cause and effect. It remains unknown whether changes in a person’s religious affiliation lead to changes in their racial attitudes over time, or if shifting political or racial beliefs prompt people to leave or join certain religious communities.

Future research should examine participants over longer periods to see how these beliefs evolve over a lifetime. Tracking individuals as they age would help scientists understand the pathways that link faith, prejudice, and voting behavior. Researchers could also benefit from using alternative measures of racism to see if the same patterns hold true across different forms of prejudice.

The study, “White Religion, Politics, and Racial Resentment in the United States,” was authored by Philip Schwadel.