Professor: Deeply Religious People Are More Racist

Apparently so, according to Wendy Wood, a professor of psychology and business at the University of Southern California. Wood and her colleagues looked at 55 studies over the last 45 years involving more than 20,000 people (mostly Christians) and found a strong correlation between religious beliefs and racism.

The studies show there’s significantly less racism among people who don’t have strong religious beliefs, while highly devout religious communities exhibit more prejudice against people of other races (with seminaries showing the highest degree of racism). The researchers found barely any difference between the amount of racism among religious fundamentalists and more moderate Christians. “Only religious agnostics were racially tolerant,” they write in their paper.