The People in Christians' Blind Spots

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Do Christian churches in the United States actually welcome people from different racial and ethnic groups? After completing Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites … and Other Lies You’ve Been Told in 2010—and winning a CT book award for it—this became a pressing question for Bradley Wright. The University of Connecticut sociologist turned to his discipline—and created a study. He described his process in Christianity Today’s July/August 2015 cover story, “Dear Pastor, Can I Come to Your Church?”:

More than 3,000 congregations received an email ostensibly from someone moving to their community and looking for a new church. We measured whether the churches replied to this email and, if so, what they said. But there was a catch: We varied the names attached to the emails so that they conveyed different racial and ethnic identities. Would the names alone change how churches replied?

One of Wright’s goals was to try to account for and measure implicit bias.

“I was more interested in behavior than self-reported attitudes,” he told CT. “Our society is at the point where it’s now viewed as unacceptable for people to express prejudicial attitudes or intent to discriminate but sometimes people might still do it and might not realize that they’re doing it.”

christianitytoday.org/inside-story/2016/february/people-in-christians-blind-spots.html