The Role of Religious Communities and Practices in Mitigating the Impact of Racism, White Supremacy, and Discrimination on Health

Abstract

The overarching goals of this dissertation are: 1) to examine the extent to which practices of religion/spirituality act as a buffer against the negative impacts of experiences of discrimination on health; and 2) to examine the ways that religious communities can act as a site of intervention to influence negative racial attitudes/beliefs/practices among members of predominantly White churches. The dissertation accepts as a premise that experiences of racism negatively impact health and that churches can be effective sites of intervention for health promotion. The first paper examines the relationship between experiences of discrimination and psychological well-being, and the extent to which aspects of religion/spirituality buffer that relationship. Using the longitudinal dataset of Midlife in the U.S., this paper suggests that meditation/chanting daily or more, service attendance weekly or more, and attendance at other church/temple activities weekly or more can have a buffering effect on the ways that discrimination harms psychological well-being. The second paper examines the ways that church engagement in racial justice contributes to individual involvement in racial justice activities. Using three timepoints of cross-sectional data from two different predominantly White religious denominations, the study suggests that there is a stronger association between hearing a sermon on racial justice or attending a workshop, training, or study group at one’s church and individual-level involvement in racial justice than between those individual-level factors and attending a church that either invited a guest preacher of a different racial/ethnic identity from one’s congregation or worshipping jointly with a congregation made up of people primarily of a different racial/ethnic identity from one’s congregation. The final paper evaluates a teach-in on white supremacy within a predominantly White liberal religious denomination in the U.S., and whether this teach-in was associated with increased self-efficacy to address racism and increased feelings of belonging in one’s own church. Results suggest that participants in the teach-in did not feel increased self-efficacy to a level of statistical significance. Feelings of connectedness increased for White participants but decreased for participants of color. Qualitative findings revealed a mixed reaction to the use of the term “white supremacy” in the framing of the teach-in.