Admit­ting that there are “so many, many pos­i­tive aspects and ben­e­fits to reli­gios­ity”, the authors of a meta-analysis on the sub­ject have shown a pos­i­tive cor­re­la­tion between reli­gious affil­i­a­tion and racism.

Orga­nized reli­gion […], by its very nature, encour­ages peo­ple to accept one fun­da­men­tal belief sys­tem as supe­rior to all oth­ers. The required value judg­ment cre­ates a kind of us-versus-them con­flict, in which mem­bers of a reli­gious group develop eth­no­cen­tric atti­tudes toward any­one per­ceived as different. […]

Stud­ies have shown that reli­gious adher­ents are more likely than agnos­tics and athe­ists to rate con­ser­v­a­tive “life val­ues” as the most impor­tant prin­ci­ples under­ly­ing their belief systems.

Those spe­cific val­ues — social con­for­mity and respect for tra­di­tion — also most closely cor­re­late with racism. In short, peo­ple are attracted to orga­nized reli­gion for the same rea­son some peo­ple are inclined toward racist think­ing: a belief in the sanc­tity of estab­lished divi­sions in society.

Of course there are numer­ous caveats. The most impor­tant of which is that the cor­re­la­tion is strongest with reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ists and is “unclear” with those who are attracted to reli­gion as a spir­i­tual pur­suit (as opposed to those who attend church as an obligation).

The researchers also note that the link is par­tic­u­larly strong with highly edu­cated sem­i­nary stu­dents, that the cor­re­la­tion seems to have been decreas­ing in recent decades, and that there is no link between “intrin­sic reli­gios­ity” and racist atti­tudes (although there is also no link between this “intrin­sic reli­gios­ity” and racial tolerance).

via Intel­li­gent Life