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.

中文翻译：

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保护和服务？跨宗教背景下的种族和警察使用武力

背景

虽然先前的研究揭示了个人宗教信仰与惩罚之间的动态关系，但对于宗教背景如何影响对惩罚的态度知之甚少。此外，关于宗教、个人或背景如何影响公众对惩罚的一个重要方面——警察使用武力——近年来引发大规模社会运动的问题——的态度，则知之甚少。

目的

本研究旨在通过检验宗教背景与对警察使用武力的态度之间的关系来填补先前研究的空白。特别是，本研究旨在调查上述关系是否因种族而异。

方法

在这项研究中，将 2000-2018 年综合社会调查 (GSS) 的个人层面数据与 2000 年美国人口普查和 2000 年宗教集会和成员研究 (RCMS) 的背景层面数据合并，从而实现对宗教影响的多层次分析关于对警察使用武力的态度。

结果

研究结果表明，县级天主教徒人口比例越高，对警察使用武力的支持就越少。相比之下，当县级福音派新教人口比例上升时，包括黑人在内的居民更加支持警察使用武力。然而，福音派新教背景对白人的影响比黑人更强，而且当县级福音派新教人口比例增加时，这种白人与黑人之间的差异就会扩大。

结论和启示

研究结果表明，宗教对惩罚态度的影响是多层次的。宗教背景对一个人对警察使用武力的看法产生了独立和不同的影响，超出了重要的个人特征。因此，在正在进行的关于警察暴行和改革的辩论中，可能需要考虑宗教背景特征。