{"id":105689,"date":"2015-11-30T10:21:32","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T15:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=105689"},"modified":"2023-06-27T12:07:41","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T16:07:41","slug":"segregated-sundays-does-e-mail-reveal-unexpected-truths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2015\/11\/segregated-sundays-does-e-mail-reveal-unexpected-truths\/","title":{"rendered":"Segregated Sundays: Does Email Reveal Unexpected Truths?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
Many churches have relatively homogeneous membership, but researchers found a difference between what some churches say about race and what they do. (iStock Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mainline Protestant churches, despite decades of advocacy for racial justice in society, are the least likely among Christian groups to respond to email inquiries about membership from people who have non-white sounding names, according to a paper published this fall by University of Connecticut researchers.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the study<\/a> found, evangelical Protestants, who typically belong to politically conservative denominations wary of political goals associated with secular liberalism, show almost no variation when it comes to responding to potential new congregants, regardless of race. The study was published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.<\/em><\/p>\n

The principal authors of the study, UConn sociology professors Michael Wallace and Bradley Wright, say this type of research provides better insight into attitudes about race as they\u2019re actually lived, rather than more old-fashioned question-and-answer surveys.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re reaching people in an unguarded moment this way,” Wright says, “which gives us an opportunity to see how people actually behave, as opposed to what they might tell a pollster on the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the research, 67.1 percent of whites who sent e-mails to Protestant churches received at least one response, compared to 57.5 percent of blacks, 59.7 percent of Hispanics, and 48.9 percent of Asians.<\/p>\n

By contrast, 59.1 percent of whites who wrote to evangelical Protestant churches received responses, compared to 59.0 percent of blacks, 57.7 percent of Hispanics, and 55.9 percent of Asians. Among Catholics, the numbers were 70.8 percent of whites receiving responses, 66.2 percent of blacks, 60.0 percent of Hispanics, and 64.6 percent of Asians.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of this has to do with where people live, first and foremost,\u201d Wallace says. \u201cOne of the reasons people affiliate with churches or any other group is because they like being around other people who are like them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study was designed by creating a nationally representative sample of 3,113 churches from the three largest Christian traditions in the U.S. The researchers then crafted a brief email inquiring about joining a particular church, and randomly assigned names typically associated with whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians to the emails.<\/p>\n

They found that not only did emails from white people receive the most responses, but that responses to whites tended to be longer in word count and more effusive, by several quality measurements, than responses to non-whites.<\/p>\n

The results weren\u2019t entirely surprising to Wallace and Wright, given the segregated nature of American Christianity. Despite the Biblical admonition to \u201cgo therefore and make disciples of all nations,\u201d about 86 percent of American Christian congregations draw at least 80 percent of their members from a single racial group.<\/p>\n

But what did surprise Wallace and Wright was the disconnect between the institutional commitments of mainline denominations and the day-to-day behavior of the churches themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cMainline Protestants will focus on social change rather than individual change \u2013 what\u2019s known as \u2018structural justice,\u2019\u201d Wallace says. \u201cEvangelical Protestants, on the other hand, tend to be more focused on how individuals behave, or \u2018interactional justice’.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wallace and Wright say the study has implications beyond individual churches\u2019 ability to live up to the principles of their faiths. Religious segregation both reinforces racial inequality throughout society, and redirects social resources, since churches play such a vital role as hubs for networking, civic participation, and charitable support.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something that Christians, and non-Christian Americans, should be concerned about,\u201d Wright says. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to express a commitment to racial harmony, but it\u2019s another thing entirely to live up to that commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research provides insight into attitudes about race and helps answer the question, ‘Do we practice what we preach?’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":105951,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2306],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1902],"class_list":["post-105689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-uconn-voices"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-19 04:42:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105689"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106132,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105689\/revisions\/106132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/105951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105689"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=105689"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=105689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}