Introduction

Our societies are growing in religious diversity, often resulting in a clash of beliefs, values, and lifestyles (Hunsberger & Jackson 2005). Learning how to successfully navigate the waters of diversity has become an important focus, as prejudice along inter-religious divides is increasingly problematic (Verkuyten et al. 2019). For example, in Western Europe, which is home to a large Muslim minority, Islam is often regarded as backward and incompatible with liberal values (Foner & Alba 2008). Consequently, there are increasing public debates regarding Muslim religious rights such as the practice of veiling or the building of mosques (Foner & Alba 2008; Shirazi & Mishra 2010). Inter-religious prejudice has also often resulted in devastating conflict such as Islamist groups targeting minority religions in Indonesia through intimidation and violence (Human Rights Watch 2016) or the long history of violence in religiously diverse India between Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians (Kausar 2006). This was also seen in the recent persecution of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group in predominately Buddhist Myanmar (“Myanmar Rohingya” 2020). Gaining a better understanding of prejudice along religious divides will work towards resolving this major threat to the cohesion of diverse societies (Clobert, Saroglou & Hwang 2017).

The relationship between religiousness and prejudice has been a topic of interest since at least the middle of the last century when it was discovered that those who were more religious were also more prejudiced (Hunsberger & Jackson 2005). This finding was counterintuitive for many because of the themes of tolerance found in much religious teaching (Allport 1966). Despite the paradoxical and often contested nature of the religiousness–prejudice relationship, at least some dimensions of religiousness have consistently been found to predict prejudice (Allport & Ross 1967; Brandt & Reyna 2010; Kanol 2021; Streib & Klein 2014). Many explanations offered for this relationship have been at the individual level, such as religious attitudes or orientations (e.g. fundamentalism) that seem to promote prejudice (Allport & Ross 1967; Altemeyer 1998; Koopmans 2015; Wulff 1991). However, there are also explanations sought at the group level, including considering the content of specific religious beliefs (Anthony et al. 2005; Clobert & Saroglou 2013; Jacobs 2009).

The majority of research done on the religiousness–prejudice relationship has been in a Western context where Christianity was historically dominant. Some research would suggest that this relationship can also be generalized to believers of all monotheistic religions (Ginges et al. 2009; Kanol 2021; Koopmans 2015), particularly in their more extreme variants that emphasise the absolute truth of their own religion in an explicit rejection of diversity (Pratt 2018). There is some preliminary evidence that suggests that this relationship works differently for followers of non-monotheistic religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, or Hinduism (Anthony et al. 2005; Clobert et al. 2014, 2017). The reason for this is thought to be that monotheistic religions tend to be exclusivist theologically, teaching that their religion is the only true religion. This is contrasted to teachings in Eastern, non-monotheistic religions, which are assumed to be more pluralistic and able to deal better with contradicting theologies (Clobert et al. 2017). Therefore, adherents of monotheistic and non-monotheistic religions likely differ in their level of theological exclusivism and this difference may help to explain potentially differential associations between religiousness and prejudice across religions.

The research to date on non-monotheistic religiousness and how this relates to prejudice, however, is scant and conducted in only a small number of countries and with small non-representative samples (for some examples see: Clobert et al. 2014, 2015, 2017; Clobert & Saroglou 2013; Anthony et al. 2005). It is fair to say there is still much to learn about how inter-religious prejudice works outside of the Western Christian context. We contribute to this literature by comparing different religious traditions in their association between religiousness and prejudice, based on large comparative and representative data and measures. Our approach allows for a rigorous empirical comparison by implementing multi-group comparisons across religious groups, contrasting adherents of the largest monotheistic and non-monotheistic religions in terms of the religiousness–prejudice link. To our knowledge, this is the first large-scale comparison between followers of monotheistic and non-monotheistic religions on this phenomenon based on cross-nationally comparative survey data. Gaining insight into whether the religiousness–prejudice relationship is universal or a phenomenon specific to monotheistic religions will greatly further our understanding of this relationship.

Targets of prejudice are often split into four main categories: moral, ethnic/racial, religious, and convictional outgroups (Clobert et al. 2017). This research will focus on prejudice, as expressed by mistrust, towards religious others. This is in light of our interest in the explanatory role of theological exclusivism. Religious others are people who belong to another religion and therefore would not adhere to the same theology. This work seeks to make a contribution to the literature by answering the following question: Is the positive relationship that has often been found between religiousness and prejudice towards religious others enhanced by theological exclusivism and does this differ between adherents of monotheistic and non-monotheistic religions?

Theory and Hypotheses

Religiousness and Prejudice

Prejudice can be defined, in line with Allport’s classic definition, as an “antipathy based on a faulty or inflexible generalization (1954, p. 9)”. Thus, prejudice is a negative attitude or feeling towards a group that is based on a stereotype that is poorly founded. There are many forms and expression of prejudice (for an extensive review, see Duckitt 1992). In this study we will focus on the feelings of mistrust toward the stereotyped group as an expression of prejudice.

Religion is said to provide its adherents with a base of values and guidelines which can produce a sense of certainty and control (Brandt & Reyna 2010). Prejudice can act as a protective mechanism against groups perceived to violate this base, such as religious, moral (e.g. homosexuals), convictional (e.g. atheists), or ethnic/national others (which can overlap with religious out-groups) (Brandt & Reyna 2010). This is particularly likely among believers who struggle to adjust to growing diversity, and in response find recourse in forms of religion that present their particular faith as an absolute truth (Pratt 2018).

Religiousness famously has a paradoxical relationship with prejudice (Allport & Ross 1967; Hoffmann et al. 2020). A positive association between religiousness and prejudice has often been shown to exist (Hunsberger & Jackson 2005). Yet at the same time, most religions teach altruism and brotherly love and there are many well-known religiously motivated individuals who have fought for civil rights and social justice (Allport 1966). Allport and Ross (1967) suspected that individual differences in religious motivations may help to explain this paradox, hypothesizing that the extrinsically religious (ER), who treat religion in a utilitarian manner, are more prejudiced than those who genuinely seek to follow the principles of their religion, the intrinsically religious (IR) (Allport & Ross 1967). Research on the IR/ER distinction has found some support for this hypothesis (Allport & Ross 1967; Ginges et al. 2009) however, research has also revealed that the relationship between religiousness and prejudice is more complicated than the bi-dimensional approach that Allport and Ross suggested (Batson & Burris 1994; Hunsberger & Jackson 2005).

Building on these findings some researchers sought answers to the paradoxical and inconsistent findings in the relationship between religiousness and prejudice in different orientations towards religion (Duriez 2004). One such orientation that has consistently been found to predict prejudice towards outgroups is fundamentalism (Hunsberger & Jackson 2005; Kanol 2021; Koopmans 2015). Fundamentalism has been described as the belief that there is only one set of true religious precepts and that these ‘must be followed today according to the fundamental, unchangeable practices of the past; and that those who believe and follow these fundamental teachings have a special relationship with the deity’ (Altemeyer & Hunsberger 1992, pg 118). This orientation is said to promote prejudice. Specifically, prejudice towards those that threaten the psychological benefits that fundamentalism provides such as a sense of control, coherency, and the reduction of ambiguity (Brandt & Reyna 2010; Pratt 2018).

In this research, we will zoom in on one important element of fundamentalism, namely theological exclusivism (Merino 2010). We hypothesize that theological exclusivism may help explain individual as well as cross-denominational differences in inter-religious prejudice.

Theological Exclusivism

Theological exclusivism is the belief that your religion is the only true path to God and salvation (Merino 2010). Exclusivism can also be understood as the opposite of theological pluralism which is the belief that no one religion holds the truth and that all religions are equal and valid (McCarthy 2007).

Unlike pluralism, theological exclusivism tends to discourage activities such as secular past-times and friendships with non-adherents (Trinitapoli 2007). Exclusivists tend to have strong social support networks within their ingroup, which functions to strengthen the ingroup ideology, while simultaneously providing little opportunity for negative outgroup stereotypes to be challenged (Burch-Brown & Baker 2016). Theological exclusivism can also mark those not adhering to their theology as threatening, potentially leading adherents to view those not holding their beliefs as less moral or trustworthy (Hunsberger & Jackson 2005; Merino 2010). Because of their theological views, some exclusivists may take moral positions against certain groups that legitimatize prejudice (Fulton et al. 1999). For example, Merino (2010) found, in a nationally representative sample in the U.S., that theological exclusivism strongly predicted negative attitudes towards building a Hindu temple or a Mosque in the respondent’s neighborhood. Streib and Klein (2014) found that in a small sample of German adolescents, exclusivist beliefs strongly predicted prejudice towards Muslims.

To conclude, the relationship between religiousness and prejudice is complex and multidimensional. While existing literature suggests that being more religious can but does not necessarily result in being more prejudiced there is evidence that suggests that religious prejudice is particularly strong for those who are theologically exclusive leading to the expectation that:

H1

The relationship between religiousness and prejudice will be more strongly positive, the higher an individuals’ level of theological exclusivism.

Conceptualising Religiousness

Religion is often considered a universal phenomenon in spite of the tremendous diversity within human cultures (Hansen & Norenzayan 2006). Yet, religiousness remains a difficult concept to define, let alone measure. This is illustrated by the great variety of theories and measures that can be found across disciplines that work towards capturing this complex human activity (Voas 2007).

Comparing religiousness cross-culturally presents an additional challenge, because religion is often deeply embedded in a cultural, social, and political context (Hunsberger & Jackson 2005) and religious expression can vary incredibly between religions. Operationalising such a complex and multidimensional concept necessarily requires simplification. Voas (2007) argues that despite the difficulties of measuring religiousness it is possible and needed to understand religious commitment and its consequences.

In recent years it has become the convention to focus on three aspects when operationalizing religiousness: belief, affiliation, and behaviour (Voas 2007). Belief reflects the internal processes of the believer such as the acceptance of doctrine, the belief in (a particular) God, and the afterlife. Affiliation is traditionally related to denominational membership; however, membership of a religious organization can be nominal and, in some cases, assigned to you at birth rather than an active choice. This is why it is important to add to this a degree of self-identification. Self-identification can also operate independently of other aspects of religiousness, meaning that there are adherents who do not practice or may not believe but still identify strongly with a particular religion (Voas 2007).

The last aspect, behaviour reflects the religious practice of an adherent. This seeks to capture religious commitment through actions such as the frequency of prayer, the giving of alms or the attendance of religious services. These practices can operate as expressions of the saliency of one’s religion (Glock 1962). Different religions expect different things from their adherents. Where being a faithful Christian may mean attending a service at least once a week (Glock 1962), this may not apply to a highly religious Hindu (Flood 1996). Similarly, devout Muslims may pray more often than those of another religion because it is part of their main tenets to pray five times a day (Winchester 2008). Despite these differences, within each religion, there will be high participators and low participators (Hunsberger 1996). Because these practices are connected to religious saliency, high participators are generally those who can be considered more religious (Glock 1962).

Differences in Theological Exclusivism Across Religions

One of the big limitations in the existing religion-prejudice research is that until the last couple of decades research has been primarily conducted in a Western Christian context (Batson & Burris 1994) yet interreligious prejudice is not unique to the Western world, as the persecution of the Rohingya illustrates (“Myanmar Rohingya” 2020). This means it is important to extend our existing understanding of this relationship to other religious contexts. One of the key challenges in performing comparisons across different religions is the confounds that can exist between religion and the unique social and political factors embedded in each context (Hunsberger & Jackson 2005). It is beyond the scope of this study to consider in-depth all the contextual factors that may play a role, instead, we seek to determine as a first step in this comparative approach whether a difference exists across religions in the religiousness–prejudice relationship. In particular, we are interested in the role that theological exclusivism plays in this relationship. Recent literature on non-monotheistic religions seems to suggest that these religions are less exclusive in their theology than monotheistic religions (Anthony et al. 2005; Clobert et al. 2015), which should make the relationship between religiousness and prejudice less strongly positive among adherents of non-monotheistic compared to monotheistic religions.

Although not all adherents of monotheistic religions are necessarily exclusivists, Jacobs (2009) suggests that the three large monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) all share an exclusive approach to their theology. This is because all three affirm the “onlyness” and oneness of (their) God. These three monotheisms also tend to dismiss alternative views on the divine-human experience (Jacobs 2009). Conversely, Hinduism, Buddhism, and East Asian religions approach religious diversity in a universalistic manner and do not view conflicting theologies as threatening (Anthony et al. 2005; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan 2001).

Hinduism is the dominant religion in India and Nepal and also has adherents in other parts of the world—mainly among the Indian diaspora (Flood 1996). The name Hinduism is a label given to the diverse spiritual practices in India that were distinct from Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. The forms and expressions of Hinduism are vastly diverse, but they share some common elements in their theology. These include a belief in reincarnation, the belief in karma (the law that all actions have an effect), and the belief that salvation is freedom from this cycle (Flood 1996, p. 6). Furthermore, most Hindus believe that God is transcendent and can be worshipped in innumerable forms. This belief is what gives the religion its polytheistic nature. However, rather than considering these diverse deities as individual gods, most Hindus will say that each are aspects or manifestations of God (Flood 1996).

The view that God can be found and worshipped in a multiplicity of ways seems more conducive to a pluralistic rather than an exclusivist approach to theology. This was supported by research done by Anthony et al. (2005) on Christian, Muslim, and Hindu students in India regarding how they view other religions. Where the Christian and the Muslims students were more exclusivist in their views, the Hindu students were pluralistic in how they viewed other religions, seeing them as equal paths to God.

Similar to Hinduism, Buddhism, traditional Chinese religions, and East Asian religions, such as Taoism, are typified as being dialectical and open-ended in their teaching (Clobert et al. 2017). Buddhism refers to a religious tradition that is around 2500 years old. Buddhist traditions find their roots in Northern India where Buddha lived and died in the fifth century BCE (Gethin 1998). From there, Buddhism spread across Asia through trade routes (Gethin 1998). Buddhism shares with Hinduism the belief in reincarnation, karma and that salvation is freedom from this cycle (Flood 1996). Recent research (Clobert et al. 2015) suggests that the open-ended thinking found in Buddhism and East Asian religions leads to a greater tolerance for contradictions. Similar to Hinduism this way of thinking tends more to inclusive or pluralistic theological beliefs. Nisbett et al. (2001) credit this thinking to the influence of Confucianism on East Asian cultures and religions. One of the central concepts in Confucianism is harmony. This value inspires dialectical thinking with regard to conflicting ideas through a process of seeking to reconcile, transcend, and ultimately accept contradictions (Nisbett et al. 2001). Clobert et al. (2015) found among a sample of Taiwanese students that East Asian religiousness indeed predicted tolerance towards religious, ethnic, and moral outgroups and this was in part explained by their high tolerance for contradiction. Clobert et al. (2015) found that priming respondents with Buddhist concepts negatively predicted prejudice of religious and moral outgroups. Based on the inclusive theology present in the non-monotheistic religions discussed here, along with the empirical findings, we expect that:

H2

Adherents of non-monotheistic religions will be less theologically exclusivist than followers of monotheistic religions.

In light of the two hypotheses, we also expect that

H3

Religiousness and prejudice will on average be more strongly positively linked among adherents of monotheistic religions than among adherents of non-monotheistic religions due to the lower level of exclusivism among the latter.

In other words at the same level of exclusivism, we expect stronger associations between religiousness and prejudice among adherents of monotheistic religions and we explore this by testing religion-specific interactions between theological exclusivism and the three dimensions of religiousness in our analyses of inter-religious prejudice.

Method

Data and Participants

This study used data from the World Values Survey, Wave 6, (WVS, Inglehart et al. 2014). The WVS is an international research program with the goal of studying the ‘social, political, economic, religious and cultural values of people in the world’. Collected between 2010 and 2014 (N = 89,565), this survey included respondents from 60 countries with adherents from all major religions. The sample included 11,177 respondents from Protestant denominations, 14,838 Catholic and 9,702 Orthodox Christian respondents. Also included in this sample were 21,756 Muslims, 169 Jews, 3905 Hindus, 3799 Buddhists and 503 adherents of other Eastern religions such as Taoism or Confucianism. Jews were excluded from the analysis because of the small sample size. Aside from these adherents, there were also 2495 followers of other religious denominations such as folk religions or spiritualists. These were also excluded from the sample. Some of the respondents (5.8%) were not asked or did not answer the question regarding their religious denomination. Respondents who indicated that they had no religious affiliation were excluded from the sample (17.6%). The final sample size was N = 65,680 of which 53.5% was female. Respondents’ age ranged from 16 to 102, with an average of 41.67 years (SD = 16.52). On average the sample had a medium level of education (M = 5.58 on a scale of 1–9, SD = 2.40). 12% of the sample had no formal education and 16.2% of the sample had a university education.

The WVS used questionnaires with standardized and pre-tested questions. The questionnaire was translated into the appropriate languages using back-translation techniques. In most countries the questionnaires were pre-tested to help identify problematic translations. In some cases when problematic questions were discovered, they were removed from the national questionnaire. The interviews were conducted face-to-face in the participant’s place of residence. Probability sampling was applied, and the sample was in most cases representative of the adult population residing in private households of each participating country (WVS, Inglehart et al. 2014).

Measures

Dependent Variables

Prejudice was measured using a composite indicator of the mistrust of religious others. Mistrust is a commonly used measure of prejudice (Merino 2010), however because respondents may be mistrusting of others in general and not just those of another religion we first calculated the mean of all the mistrust items in the survey and then subtracted this from the mean of the mistrust of those of another religion. This way by also taking general mistrust into account we hope to gain a more accurate measure of mistrust of religious others.

The respondents were asked how much they trust those of their family, their neighborhood, people they know personally, people they meet for the first time, people of another religion and people of another nationality. They could indicate their response with the answer categories Trust completely (0), Do not trust at all (3). After subtracting the mean of the other mistrust items from that of religious others the scale ranged from − 3 to 3. Higher values indicating greater mistrust.

Independent Variables

Religiousness was measured using three single indicators, belief, identity and practice.

Belief was a single item dichotomous (0/1). The respondents were asked whether they believe in God (1 = yes and 0 = no).

Identity was as dichotomous variable made up of the mean of two items that were first centered (α = 0.745). Respondents were asked about the importance of religion, and whether they considered themselves religious or not.

Regarding the importance of religion, respondents were asked to indicate how important they considered religion in their life. Answer categories were 0 = Very important, 1 = Rather important, 2 = Not very important, 3 = Not at all important. The first two answer categories were coded as 1, indicating the importance of religion and the last to were coded as 0 indicated that religion was not very important.

Second, the respondents were asked: “Independently of whether you attend religious services or not, would you say you are 1 = A religious person 2 = Not a religious person 3 = An atheist. The answers were recoded into 0 = not religious and 1 = religious.

Practice was a continuous variable made up of the mean of two items measuring the frequency of attendance and prayer (IIC = 0.649). Respondents were asked: “Apart from weddings and funerals, about how often do you attend religious services these days/about how often do you pray?” For attendance they could indicate their answer on a 7-point Likert scale (0 = More than once a week, 6 = Never, practically never).

To answer the question regarding frequency of prayer the respondent could indicate their answer on an 8-point scale ranging from (0 = Several times a day, 7 = Never, practically never). Answer category 0 = Several times a week and 1 = only when attending services were grouped in order to create a 7-point scale for prayer. Both items were recoded and centered so that a higher value indicated more frequency.

Moderators

Theological exclusivism was measured using a single categorical indicator. The respondents could indicate their agreement with the following statement on a four-point scale (0 = strongly agree, 3 = strongly disagree), ‘The only acceptable religion is my religion.’ The answers were recoded so that a higher value indicated greater theological exclusivism.

Religious affiliation was used as the grouping variable for the multigroup structural equation modelling. Respondents were asked if they belonged to a religion and if so, which one. They could choose out of Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox (Russian/Greek/etc.), Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist. They also had the option to fill in the name of their religion if it was not on the list provided. If the religion filled in by the respondent could fit into one of the seven broad denominations compared in this study, they were included with those denominations. This was mostly applicable to adherents of Protestant Christian denominations which were sometimes named instead of choosing the larger Protestant label, such as Anglican or Evangelical. It was not possible to split out the Muslim adherents by denomination (e.g. Shi’ites vs. Sunnites) as the majority did not specify to which denomination they belonged. The Eastern religions Taoism, Yiguan Dao, Daoism and Confucianism were group together into a single category: Other Eastern Religions. The remaining religious groups were excluded from the sample.

Control Variables

Gender was coded as a dichotomous variable (0 = male, 1 = female).

Education was measured using a 9-point scale ranging from ‘no formal education’ (1) to ‘university level education, with degree’ (9). Age was measured in years. Income was assessed be asking the respondent to indicate on a scale of 1 to 10 what group their household was in, 1 indicating the lowest income group and ten the highest income group in their country. They were asked to “specify the appropriate number counting all wages, salaries, pensions and other incomes that come in”. Because prejudice against someone of another religion has also been shown to be influenced by to how much exposure one has to religious-others (Ciftci et al. 2016) we also included the Religious Density Index (RDI) (Grim et al. 2015) to control for the religious density in the respondents’ country of residence. The RDI is based on the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index, which is used in various fields to measure the degree of concentration of various populations. It measures the percentage of each country’s population that belongs to each major religious group, as of 2010. The closer a country comes to having equal shares of the eight groups, the higher its religious diversity. The index is on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being maximum possible diversity.

Method of Analysis

To test differences between the religious groups, multiple group structural equation modeling (MGSEM) was applied using Mplus version 7. This allowed for the moderation model to be estimated across multiple groups (Kline 2016). Mplus is also able to deal with the missing values through full information maximum likelihood estimation. This allows Mplus to estimate a path where there is information while disregarding those paths where information is missing (Kline 2016). First a moderation model was fitted split out by religion, estimating the main effects of the three dimensions of religiousness and of exclusivism on inter-religious mistrust as criterion variable, and then adding the interactions. Controls were included in all the models as predictors of the outcome variable. Subsequently, Wald testing was applied to determine if there were significant differences within and between the monotheistic and non-monotheistic religions in the associations between religiousness, exclusivism and inter-religious mistrust.

Results

Because Hypothesis 2 is a descriptive question regarding group differences we first provide the results for Hypothesis 2 before moving on to discuss the results of Hypothesis 1. Table 1 provides descriptive statistics of all the variables split out by denomination. It also includes Wald testing of the differences in the means of the indicators between the seven religions and between the religions when combined into monotheistic and non-monotheistic groupings (Table 1, right panel). Comparing the means of the three religiousness indicators across the seven religious groups, the majority indicated that they believed in God. The majority of the respondents per denomination considered themselves to be a religious person, and they considered God and religion to be important. Religious practice revealed more differentiation, with Protestants indicating the highest levels of practice and Buddhists the lowest. Muslims indicated the highest levels of mistrust of religious others, and Protestants the lowest (Table 1).

Table 1 Descriptive statistics: means (SD) by religion
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Hypothesis 2 expected adherents of monotheistic religions to be more theologically exclusivist than non-monotheistic adherents. When comparing the combined means of the monotheistic adherents with the combined means of the non-monotheistic adherents they are significantly different from one another on all of the indicators including levels of theological exclusivism (Table 1, right panel). When looking at the religions separately, Table 1 shows that Muslims have the highest level of exclusivism, and this is significantly higher than that of the other six religions. Exclusivism is lowest among adherents of Other Eastern Religions. While these cases are in line with the direction of our hypothesis, the mean values of exclusivism did not differ statistically significantly between Catholics and Buddhists, as well as between Hindus and Orthodox Christians. Also, the means of the non-monotheistic groups were significantly different from one another. In addition to the univariate analyse we conducted a regression analysis (see Appendix Table 5) which revealed that adherents of mono-theistic religions were significantly more theologically exclusive than adherents of non-monotheistic religions however, with the addition of the control variables this difference disappears (Table 5 in the Appendix). This suggests that there are other drivers to theological exclusivism than the expected religious differences. Looking within these groups we again see significant differences in levels of theological exclusivism (see Model 4, Table 5 in Appendix). The regression analysis taken together with the univariate analysis indicates that differences in theological exclusivism between the religions cannot be accurately described as resulting from the monotheistic/non-monotheistic divide that the hypothesis suggested. Therefore, no support was found for Hypothesis 2.

Table 2 displays the correlations between the main variables for the pooled sample. All variables correlated significantly with each other except for belief and mistrust towards religious others. The correlations between the other two measures of religiousness and mistrust were weak and for practice, there was a negative correlation, which is opposite to what was expected. This suggests that being strongly religious does not result in strongly mistrusting religious others, and in the case of more frequent practice may even reduce levels of mistrust. The correlations between the three indicators of religiousness and exclusivism were weak to moderate and in the expected direction. The correlation between mistrust and exclusivism was moderate and positive as expected, meaning that those who were more exclusive also tended to be more mistrusting.

Table 2 Correlations of the main constructs, pooled sample (N = 65,680)
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Group Differences in the Relation Between Religiousness, Exclusivism, and Mistrust Towards Religious Others

In order to test whether the relationship between religiousness, exclusivism and mistrust differs across religions in ways that reflect the divide between monotheistic and non-monotheistic religions, it was necessary to first determine if the seven religions needed to be analyzed separately or whether it was possible to essentially reduce the comparison to two groups—adherents of monotheistic and non-monotheistic religions—by constraining the relations to be equal between and within these broader denominational categories. Thus, a multigroup structural equation model was fitted (Table 4) over the seven religious groups, first with the main effects of religiousness and exclusivism on mistrust (Model 1) and then with the addition of the interactions between exclusivism and religiousness (Model 2). Subsequently, Wald testing was applied (Table 3) to the different paths in the models to determine whether they could be constrained to equality within the adherents of monotheistic religions and within the adherents of non-monotheistic religions.

Table 3 Wald test statistics of the constraints of main effects and interactions of religiosity and exclusivism on mistrust (N = 65,680)
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First, the paths from the three dimensions of religiousness and exclusivism to mistrust were constrained one at a time. In other words, we checked whether the main effects of religiousness and exclusivism on mistrust could be constrained to be the same for the three Christian denominations and Muslims and whether a similar constraint could be implemented for Hindus, Buddhists, and Other Eastern Religions. The paths with the interactions were tested in the same way.

Second, the tests were applied this time constraining all four main effects simultaneously to be the same within the two groups of monotheistic and non-monotheistic adherents, with and without the three interaction effects (Table 3).

Table 3, column 1 revealed significant differences for one out of the four paths (between practice and mistrust) for the monotheistic denominations. Because it was reasonable to assume that the Christians in the sample may be more similar to each other than to the Muslims, additional Wald testing was applied constraining the paths of the three Christian religions to be equal (Table 3, column 2). However, significant differences were also found for the same path between the three Christian denominations. For the three non-monotheistic religions, all the paths except for the one between religious identity and mistrust could be constrained to be equal (Table 3, column 3). When simultaneously constraining all four main effects, with and without the interactions to be the same, first for the mono-theistic groups, then only the Christian religions, and subsequently for the non-monotheistic religions we found significant differences between all seven denominations (Table 3).

This means that when considering the relations between mistrust and the separate dimensions of religiousness and exclusivism, Christian religions were significantly different from Muslims and from each other on some of the paths in the model as well as when the four main effects were jointly considered.. This does not allow for a generalisation across adherents of all monotheistic religions regarding the relationships of interest. The non-monotheistic religions also significantly differed from each other regarding the association between religious identity and mistrust, as well as when the main effects of religiousness and exclusivism are jointly analysed. Therefore, this step of our analysis revealed that there are significant differences between religions within the broad categories of monotheistic and non-monotheistic adherents that do not allow us to make a meaningful comparison at this more abstract level by grouping together different religious traditions. Thus, when considering the combined paths representing the relation of religiousness and exclusivism with mistrust (with and without the interactions), we present group-specific results for the seven religions in Table 4.

Table 4 OLS multigroup regression of religious mistrust, by religion. (a) N = 65,680, (b) N = 65,680
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Hypothesis 1 expected that the relationship between religiousness and mistrust of religious others will be more strongly positive the higher an individuals’ level of theological exclusivism.

In considering the main effects in the model (Table 4, Model 1) the dimensions of religiousness were not consistently related to mistrust across religious groups.

An increase in theological exclusivism was associated with an increase in mistrust for all of the denominational groups except for Other Eastern Religions, for which the relation was negative (and not significant). An increase in belief was not related to stronger mistrust for any of the denominations. This relationship was significantly negative for Protestants and Buddhists. A stronger religious identity was not related to stronger mistrust for any of the denominations and it predicted a decrease in mistrust for Catholics and Orthodox. Also religious practice was not significantly related to stronger mistrust for any of the religions. To the contrary more highly practicing Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Muslims had significantly lower levels of mistrust. In sum, whereas being theologically exclusive was consistently positively associated with mistrust, religiousness by and large was related to lower levels of mistrust of religious others.

When including the interactions between the three indicators of religiousness and theological exclusivism (Table 4, Model 2) the main effect of exclusivism was only related to an increase in mistrust for Protestants and for Orthodox. In other words, Protestants and Orthodox who had low levels of religiousness were more mistrusting if they were more exclusivist. For the other religions, among adherents who had low levels of religiousness, exclusivism was not related to mistrust.

There were no significant interactions between religious belief and exclusivism, except for strongly believing Buddhist for which exclusivism further reduces the relationship between believing and mistrust (Table 4). This is contrary to the expectation in Hypothesis 1.

Turning our attention to the dimension of identity, we found the expected positive moderation between exclusivism and identity among Orthodox Christians and Buddhists. However, the main relationship between religious identity and mistrust was negative for both groups in the interaction model, meaning that the relationship between highly identifying Orthodox and Buddhist merely became less strongly negative for both groups (see Figs. 1 and 2). This a runs counter to our expectation that exclusivism would strengthen the positive relation between religiousness and mistrust, also for the dimension of religious identity.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Interaction between religious identification and theological exclusivism for Orthodox Christians

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Fig. 2
figure 2

Interaction between religious identification and theological exclusivism for Buddhists

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Contrary to Hypothesis 1, higher levels of practice taken together with higher levels of exclusivism was only associated with an increase in mistrust for Buddhists. Furthermore, in direct contradiction to H1, Hindu’s who practiced their faith more frequently and were more exclusivist, were less mistrusting than adherents with the same levels of exclusivism who did not practice their faith as frequently.

Hypothesis 1 expected that religiousness would be associated with more mistrust and this relationship would be strengthened at higher levels of exclusivism. The predicted interaction was found for the dimension of religious identity and practice and for two out of seven groups, but this went together with a main effect that was opposite of what was expected. Therefore, no support was found for Hypothesis 1.

Furthermore, there was only partial support found for the underlying assumption that, independent of individual and denominational differences in theological exclusivism, more religious people are more mistrusting, as the dimensions of religiousness related differentially to mistrust across religious groups and dimensions. Instead, we found for all groups except adherents of Other Eastern religions that higher levels of theological exclusivism went together with more mistrust of religious others. This is also counter to Hypothesis 3 which expected religiousness and prejudice to be more strongly positively linked among adherents of monotheistic religions than among adherents of non-monotheistic religions.

It is also notable that theological exclusivism was associated with more mistrust among Protestants and Orthodox who scored low on religiousness. These individuals, who do not attach importance to religion, do not believe in God and do not frequently practice their religion, still held higher levels of inter-religious mistrust as a function of their belief that their religion is the only true religion. Combined with the more consistent association of theological exclusivism with mistrust and the mixed findings for the three dimensions of religiousness, this result supports our notion that the way in which individuals reason about religion is more consequential for their attitudes towards religious others than the extent of their religiousness in terms of belief, identity and behaviour.Footnote 1

Discussion

Investigating how religiousness and prejudice are related to one another is not new in the social sciences. Although this relationship has often been found to exist (Allport & Ross 1967) previous research has shown that it is far from straightforward and that the strength and direction of the relationship can greatly vary (McCarthy 2007; Wulff 1991). In addition to this, the majority of research on this relationship has been conducted in Western and historically Christian contexts, begging the question of whether religiousness also fosters prejudice among adherents of other world religions. Using the World Values Survey, Wave 6, (WVS, Inglehart et al. 2014) this research sought to extend the literature by comparing the religiousness–prejudice relationship across seven religions: three Christian religions, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Other Eastern Religions. These groups could be roughly divided into monotheistic (Christian and Muslim) and non-monotheistic religions (Hindu, Buddhist, and Other Eastern Religions). Although scant, the previous research that has been conducted on non-monotheistic religiousness suggests it does not increase prejudice and that this may be because their adherents are pluralistic in their theology and better able to accept contradicting beliefs (McCarthy 2007; Clobert et al. 2017). Therefore, this research specifically focused on whether prejudice resulting from religiousness was accentuated by theological exclusivism, i.e., the idea that your religion is the only right religion (Merino 2010). This came with the expectation that prejudice resulting from religiousness would be stronger for adherents of monotheistic than non-monotheistic religions as a result of greater levels of theological exclusivism. In particular prejudice expressed in inter-religious mistrust was examined.

Although theological exclusivism was associated with greater prejudice for almost all of the groups, a clear distinction was not evident between the monotheistic and non-monotheistic adherents with regard to levels of exclusivism. Furthermore, the seven religions were significantly different from one another in how religiousness related to prejudice and how this was influenced by exclusivism. The descriptive and regression results, therefore, provided no support for the monotheistic/non-monotheistic divide that was hypothesized (H2).

The results of the moderation analyses once again highlighted the multidimensionality of religiousness. The three dimensions belief, identity, and practice each related differently to prejudice across the religions, indicating that some types of religiousness can increase prejudice, and some can work to reduce it. Strong identifiers held less prejudice, however this relationship became less strongly negative for exclusivist Buddhists and exclusivist Orthodox Christians. These results provided no support for the first hypothesis that expected exclusivism to strengthen the positive relationship between religiousness and prejudice.

One notable finding is that exclusivism was associated with greater prejudice for Protestants and Muslims who scored low on religiousness. These were respondents who indicated that they did not believe, practice or identify very strongly with their religion yet still considered their religion to be the only right one. In this case, these respondents may have been cultural or nominal believers who were not very religious yet still had exclusivists attitudes. This can be understood in line with Wulff’s (1991) two-dimensional approach towards religious orientations, which considers the ways in which individuals reason about religion (e.g. exclusivist vs. pluralistic) to be independent of their level of religious involvement. Indeed, research using this approach has found reasoning about religion (in literal vs. symbolic ways) to be more predictive of out-group prejudice than individuals’ level of religiousness (Duriez et al. 2007). Similarly, among Muslim minorities in Western countries, religious fundamentalism was found to be a stronger predictor or out-group hostility than religious identification (Koopmans 2015), indicating that even when individual differences in the extent of religiousness are taken into account, more fundamentalist approaches to religion go together with more prejudice.

To conclude, some dimensions of religiousness are associated with more prejudice and some with less, and this differs across religions. These findings align with previous research and warn against simplistic assumptions about intrinsically prosocial or anti-social effects of religion (Oviedo 2016; Shariff & Norenzayan 2007) Rather, in line with research on religious fundamentalism, theological exclusivism appears to more consistently promote prejudice. However the differences that we expected between the monotheistic and non-monotheistic religions based exclusivist monotheistic tradition versus the more pluralistic approach to theology in non-monotheistic religions could not distinctly be drawn. Thus, our results suggest that individual differences in approaches to or reasoning about religion are more important to understand differential levels of inter-religious mistrust than religious differences rooted in different theologies.

Limitations and Future Research

The findings of our research need to be interpreted with some limitations in mind. It is well documented that measuring religiousness is challenging (Voas 2007). Attempting to do this across-religions and cross-culturally accentuated these challenges. Future research should consider using latent measures in order to better capture the multidimensionality of religiousness whilst being able to deal with measurement error. Our measurement for theological exclusivism or different reasonings about religion more generally could also be improved upon by using a more complex measure which would capture this concept more accurately. One example would be to apply the post-critical belief scale which is based on the four religious attitudes outlined by Wulff (1991) yet so far has only been applied in Western contexts with Christian traditions (Krysinska et al. 2014).

Second, religion does not exist in isolation but is embedded in a cultural, social, and political context (Hunsberger & Jackson 2005) and religious expression can vary incredibly between religions. For instance, the minority status of a religious group or past and present conflicts can affect not only who the respondents consider their religious others but also their prejudice levels towards those groups. Although considering these contextual differences was beyond the scope of this study, it is important to recognize that these factors can play a role in this relationship and we recommend future researchers to probe into contextual characteristics such as religious minority or majority status and a history of (religious) conflict that might moderate the relations we examined.

Despite these limitations, this study was unique with its cross-denominational approach. To our knowledge, this has been the first large-scale comparison made between followers of monotheistic and non-monotheistic religions on the religiousness–prejudice relationship. This unique approach was made possible by using a large cross-nationally representative survey.

Conclusion

This paper was motivated by the lacuna of comparative research on religious prejudice contrasting more frequently studied Western (mostly Christian) populations with much more understudied non-Western and non-monotheistic religiousness. Some research suggests that the religiousness–prejudice relationship is a monotheistic phenomenon (Ginges et al. 2009) and that this works differently for adherents of non-monotheistic religions (Clobert et al. 2017; Anthony et al. 2005) because these religions tend to be more theologically pluralistic (Anthony et al 2005; McCarthy 2007; Clobert et al. 2017) than monotheistic religions (Merino 2010). There was no support found for the expectation that prejudice resulting from religiousness would be stronger for adherents of monotheistic denominations as a result of greater exclusivism. Furthermore, religiousness was not always associated with stronger prejudice and the relation varied depending on which dimension of religiousness was considered and across religious denominations. Theological exclusivism, as expected, proved to be a consistent predictor of prejudice for six out of the seven denominations, and for two of them, this relation was more pronounced for high religious identifiers. Notably, Protestants and Orthodox who were not religious but were exclusivist were also prejudiced towards religious others.

This research once again highlighted the multidimensionality of religiousness and the complexity of understanding its relationship to prejudice. Religious diversity is often feared to result in a clash of beliefs, values, and lifestyles (Hunsberger & Jackson 2005). However, this research has revealed that some dimensions of religiousness lead to a reduction of prejudice and that it is often those adherents who do not believe, practice, or identify with their religion that are more inclined to be prejudiced than those who are more religious, at least if they consider their religion to be the only right one. This is an important finding for policymakers working in religiously diverse settings as it suggests that promoting inclusive and pluralistic attitudes towards religion will work toward more peaceful religiously diverse societies.