Abstract
Background
While prior research has revealed a dynamic relationship between individual religiosity and punitiveness, much less is known about how religious context might affect attitudes toward punitiveness. In addition, even less is known about how religion, individual or contextual, might shape public attitudes toward an important aspect of punitiveness—police use of force, an issue that has evoked large-scale social movements in recent years.
Purpose
The present research aims to fill in the gap from prior research by examining the relationship between religious context and attitudes toward police use of force. Particularly, this study intends to investigate whether said relationship varies by race.
Methods
In this study, individual-level data from the General Social Survey (GSS) 2000–2018 were merged with contextual-level data from the U.S. Census 2000 and the Religious Congregations and Membership Study (RCMS) 2000 enabling a multilevel analysis of the religious effects on attitudes toward police use of force.
Results
Study results suggest that higher county-level Catholic population share was associated with less support for police use of force. In contrast, when county-level evangelical Protestant population share rose, residents, including Blacks, became more supportive of police use of force. However, the evangelical Protestant contextual effect was stronger for Whites than Blacks, and this White-Black difference grew when county-level evangelical Protestant population share increased.
Conclusions and Implications
The findings suggest that religious effects on attitudes toward punitiveness are multilevel. Religious context exerts independent and divergent influences on one's perceptions of police use of force above and beyond important individual characteristics. Therefore, religious contextual characteristics may need to be considered in the ongoing debate on police brutality and reform.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Adamczyk, Amy, and Cassady Pitt. 2009. Shaping attitudes about homosexuality: the role of Religion and Cultural Context. Social Science Research 38: 338–351.
2.
Applegate, Brandon, Francis T. Cullen, and Bonnie Fisher, and ThomasVanderVen. 2000. Forgiveness and fundamentalism: reconsidering the relationship between Correctional Attitudes and Religion. Criminology 38: 719–754.
3.
Association Of Religion Data Archives, and Pennsylvania State University. The Association of Religion Data Archives. United States, 2002. Web Archive. https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0003961/.
4.
Bader, Christopher D., A. Scott, F. Desmond, Carson Mencken, and R. Byron, and Johnson. 2010. Divine Justice: the relationship between images of God and Attitudes toward Criminal punishment. Criminal Justice Review 35 (1): 90–106.
5.
Bartkowski, John P. 1995. Spare the Rod… or spare the child? Divergent perspectives on Conservative Protestant Child Discipline. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 37: 97–116.
6.
Bartkowski, John P., and Christopher G. Ellison. 1995. Divergent perspectives on child rearing: conservative Protestants vs. the secular experts. Sociology of Religion 56: 21–34.
7.
Beyerlein, Kraig, and John R. Hipp. 2005. Social Capital, too much of a good thing? American religious traditions and community crime. Social Forces 84 (2): 995–1013.
8.
Borg, Marian J. 1997. The Southern subculture of Punitiveness? Regional Variation in support for capital punishment. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 34: 25–46.
9.
Britt, Chester. L. 1998. Race, Religion, and support for the death penalty: a Research note. Justice Quarterly 15: 175–191.
10.
Dobson, James. 1978. The Strong-Willed child: birth through adolescence . Wheaton, IL: Living Books.
11.
Durkheim, Emile. 1997. 1897. Suicide . The Free Press reprint.
12.
———. 1915. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life . London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
13.
———. 1984. The Division of Labor in Society . New York: Free Press.
14.
Ellison, Christopher G., and Darren E. Sherkrat. 1993. Conservative Protestantism and Support for Corporal punishment. American Sociological Review 58: 131–144.
15.
Froese, Paul, and Christopher D. Bader. 2007. God in America: why Theology is not simply the concern of philosophers. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 46 (4): 465–481.
16.
Froese, Paul, and Christopher D. Bader, and Buster Smith. 2008. Political tolerance and God’ wrath in the United States. Sociology of Religion 69: 29–44.
17.
Garland, David. 1990. Punishment and modern society. A study in Social Theory . New York: Oxford University Press.
18.
Grasmick, Harold G., and Anne L. McGill. 1994. Religion, Attributional Style, and punitiveness toward Juvenile Offenders. Criminology 32: 23–46.
19.
Gunnoe, Marjorie, E. Lindner, Mavis Hetherington, and David Reiss. 2006. Differential Impact of Fathers’ authoritarian parenting on early adolescent Adjustment in conservative protestant versus other families. Journal of Family Psychology 4: 589–596.
20.
Huijts, Tim, and Gerbert Kraaykamp. 2011. Religious involvement, Religious Context, and Self-Assessed Health in Europe. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 52 (1): 91–106.
21.
John Paul, I. I., and Pope. Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis of the Supreme Pontiff, John Paul II, to the Bishops, Priests, Religious Families, Sons and Daughters of the Church and All People of Good Will for the Twentieth Anniversary of Populorum Progressio. Washington, D.C.: Office of Publishing and Promotion Services, United States Catholic Conference, 1988.
22.
Jones, Dale E., Sherri Doty, Clifford Grammich, James E. Horsch, Richard Houseal, Mac Lynn, John P. Marcum, Kenneth M. Sanchagrin, and Richard H. Taylor. 2002. Religious congregations and membership in the United States 2000: an enumeration by Region, State and County based on data reported by 149 religious bodies . Nashville, TN: Glenmary Research Center.
23.
Jones, Robert P. 2016. The end of White Christian America . New York: Simon & Schuster.
24.
Lautmann, Rüdiger, and Daniela Klimke. 2004. “Punitivität als Schlüsselbegriff für eine kritische Kriminologie [Punitivity as key term for a critical criminology].” Pp. 9–29 in Punitivität. 8, edited by R. Lautmann, D. Klimke, and F. Sack. Beiheft des Kriminologischen Journals. Weinheim: Juventa.
25.
McDaniel, Eric L., and Christopher G. Ellison. 2008. God's Party? Race, Religion, and partisanship over Time. Political Research Quarterly 61 (2): 180–191.
26.
Messner, Steven F., Eric P. Baumer, and Richard Rosenfeld. 2006. Distrust of Government, the Vigilante tradition, and support for capital punishment. Law & Society Review 40 (3): 559–590.
27.
Moore, Laura M., and Seth Ovadia. 2006. Accounting for spatial variation in Tolerance: the Effects of Education and Religion. Social Forces 84 (4): 2205–2222.
28.
Perl, Paul, and Jamie S. McClintock. 2001. The catholic “Consistent life Ethic” and attitudes toward capital punishment and Welfare Reform. Sociology of Religion 62 (3): 275–299.
29.
Pew Research Center. 2014. Religious Landscape Study. Retrieved Dec. 29, 2021 https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/racial-and-ethnic-composition/.
30.
———.2016. US Religious Groups and their Political Leanings. Retrieved Dec. 29. 2021. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/23/u-s-religious-groups-and-their-political-leanings/.
31.
———. 2020. Amid Protests, Majorities Across Racial and Ethnic Groups Express Support for the Black Lives Matter Movement. Retrieved Dec. 29, 2021 https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/06/12/amid-protests-majorities-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups-express-support-for-the-black-lives-matter-movement/.
32.
Roberts, Lynne D., and David Indermaur. 2007. Predicting Punitive Attitudes in Australia. Psychiatry Psychology and Law 14 (1): 56–65.
33.
Rubin, Donald B. 1996. Multiple imputation after 18 + years. Journal of the American Statistical Association 91 (434): 473–489.
34.
Shelton, Jason. 2018. Is RELTRAD still the Gold Standard? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 57 (4): 817–826.
35.
Shelton, Jason, and Michael O. Emerson. 2012. Blacks and whites in Christian America: how racial discrimination . New York: NYU Press.
36.
Smidt, Corwin E. 2019. Reassessing the Concept and Measurement of Evangelicals: the case for the RELTRAD Approach. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 58 (4): 833–853.
37.
Smith, Tom W. 2006. Altruism and Empathy in America: Trends and correlates . Chicago: National Opinion Research Center.
38.
Soss, Joe, Laura Langbein, and Alan R. Metelko. 2003. Why do White Americans support the death penalty? Journal of Politics 65: 397–421.
39.
Stack, Steven. 2003. Authoritarianism and support for the death penalty: a multivariate analysis. Sociological Focus 36: 333–352.
40.
Steensland, Brian, Jerry Z. Park, Mark D. Regnerus, Lynn D. Robinson, W. Bradford Wilcox, and Robert Woodberry. 2000. The measure of american Religion: toward improving the state of the art. Social Forces 79 (1): 291–318.
41.
Stetzer, Ed, and Ryan P. Burge. 2016. RELTRAD coding problems and a New Repository. Politics and Religion 9: 187–190.
42.
The New York Times. 2018. Pope Francis Declares Death Penalty Unacceptable in All Cases. Retrieved Dec. 29, 2021 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/world/europe/pope-death-penalty.html.
43.
Ulmer, Jeffrey T., and T. Casey, and Harris. 2013. Race and the religious contexts of violence: linking Religion and White, Black, and latino violent crime. The Sociological Quarterly 54 (4): 610–646.
44.
Unnever, James D., and Francis T. Cullen. 2006. Christian fundamentalism and support for capital punishment. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 43: 169–197.
45.
———. 2007. Reassessing the Racial Divide in Support for Capital Punishment the Continuing Significance of Race. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 44(1): 124–158.
46.
Unnever, James D., T. Francis, Cullen, and Brandon Applegate. 2005. Turning the other Cheek: reassessing the impact of Religion on Punitive ideology. Justice Quarterly 22: 304–339.
47.
Vox. 2015. How Martin Luther King Jr.‘s Faith Drove His Activism. Retrieved Dec. 29, 2021 https://www.vox.com/2015/1/19/7852311/martin-luther-king-faith.
48.
Weber, Max. 1905. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of capitalism . New York: Scribner.
49.
Wozniak, Kevin H., and Andrew R. Lewis. 2010. Reexamining the Effect of Christian Denominational Affiliation on Death Penalty support. Journal of Criminal Justice 38 (5): 1082–1089.
50.
Young, Robert L. 1992. Religious orientation, race and support for the death penalty. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 31 (1): 76–87.