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Racialized Responses to COVID-19
Racial inequality has persisted throughout the pandemic. Black, Latino, and Native American communities face significantly higher contraction and death rates from COVID-19 than the white population (Wood 2020). Racist tropes from political elites about the origins of COVID-19 have led to increased discrimination toward Asian Americans (Reny and Barreto 2020). As minoritized communities have been confronted with largely different pandemic circumstances, their responses to the pandemic may also differ from white Americans. In particular, scholars have demonstrated that religion plays a varying role across racial groups (McKenzie and Rouse 2013; Wong 2015; Yukich and Edgell 2020). Holding a consistent religious tradition, such as evangelicalism, does not translate into similar political attitudes among Asian, Black, Latino, and white Americans (Wong 2018a). Additionally, churches have historically been central organizing institutions among minoritized communities. However, the headlining stories about religion have neglected to explore the influence of religious experiences, which are highly racialized, toward a pandemic that has disproportionately affected racial minorities. This leads to a puzzle—have all Christians responded similarly to the pandemic, or do these racial divides within religion also persist amid the coronavirus outbreak?
In this chapter, I consider how race differentiates Christians’ behaviors and attitudes during the pandemic. Using two separate surveys, I evaluate whether there are significant differences between the rates of in-person church service cancellations between Christians of color and white Christians. Related to this, I examine Christians’ religious behavior during the pandemic—if they are still attending in-person services—and more generally, what predicts Christians’ social distancing behavior. Next, I analyze Christians’ attitudes toward the pandemic, how these attitudes vary by race, and what drives these attitudes among Christians of color and white Christians separately. This is an important distinction, because just as the role of religion changes within racial groups, the determinants of pandemic behaviors and attitudes among Christians may vary within racial groups. I conclude my analysis with a look at how the pandemic has influenced the strength of Christians’ religious faith. As the church has been a force for political mobilization, group attachment, and well-being, especially among minoritized communities, the coronavirus outbreak provides a relevant case for examining racialized differences among Christians.
Race, Religion, and COVID-19
We should expect race to continue being a differentiating factor in Christians’ pandemic responses because religion is a highly racialized experience (Yukich and Edgell 2020). Churches are largely racially segregated (Emerson and Smith 2001; Shelton and Emerson 2012), and the church has been a particularly salient venue for increasing civic engagement and social capital among racial/ethnic minorities (Chan and Phoenix 2020; Djupe and Grant 2001; Gershon, Pantoja, and Taylor 2016; McClerking and McDaniel 2005; Taylor, Gershon, and Pantoja 2014; Valenzuela 2014). For example, attending politically homogeneous churches can increase civic engagement among Asian Americans (Chan and Phoenix 2020). Black congregations are more likely to host voter registration drives than Asian, Hispanic, and white churches (Brown 2009), and higher church attendance among Black Christians is associated with greater political participation (Philpot and McDaniel 2020). In general, churches seek to serve the needs of their communities, and the Black church has historically been an example of how minority churches serve many roles for their communities beyond spiritual care (Fitzgerald and Spohn 2005; Lincoln and Mamiya 1990; Rowland and Isaac-Savage 2014).
Because the coronavirus outbreak has had disparate impacts on communities of color, churches continue to fill different needs for their respective populations. Some of these needs are physical as marginalized racial groups have contracted COVID-19 and died from it at higher rates than white Americans (Wood 2020), and racial discrimination within the American health care system is well documented (Shavers et al. 2012). But some needs are psychological as well. From the beginning of the pandemic, white conservative elites racialized the coronavirus by referring to it as the “Chinese virus,” “Wuhan virus,” and “Kung Flu,” which increased anti-Asian attitudes and discrimination (Reny and Barreto 2020). Asian Americans, both U.S.- and foreign-born, report increased experiences of discrimination related to coronavirus, and they report increased psychological distress because of it. Further, Black and Hispanic Americans also report higher experiences of stigmatization surrounding coronavirus than non-Hispanic, white Americans (Pan et al. 2020).
The coronavirus could present another case where people turn to their religious communities and beliefs to bring them physical and psychological support. Much of the literature on religion among minoritized groups has focused on historically Black Protestant churches, and the Black church has been a central institution in Black communities (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990). Greater religious social support helps people cope with the anxiety generated by racist experiences (Graham and Roemer 2012; Kim 2017). Clergy of Black churches are aware of the needs of their community and largely see the church as having a role in meeting the health education needs of their congregants (Rowland and Isaac-Savage 2014), and a study of churches in the South found that Black churches are more likely to provide mental health services to their congregants (Blank et al. 2002). The pandemic has amplified needs these churches have historically sought to address, but because public meetings are unsafe during the pandemic, COVID-19 presents a unique challenge for meeting these needs.
Partisanship is also intermixed in the interaction of race and religion within the pandemic. White Christians—even more so, white evangelicals—largely identify with the Republican Party (Layman 2001; Margolis 2018; McDaniel and Ellison 2008). However, despite similar opinions about traditional moral issues and similar religious beliefs, Black Christians largely identify as Democrats (Calhoun-Brown 1998; McDaniel and Ellison 2008). As the coronavirus outbreak has received polarized responses from Democrats and Republicans, it is likely that Christians’ partisan loyalties will influence their behaviors and attitudes about the pandemic. Even further, it is possible that Christians’ attitudes about the pandemic will merely reflect their partisanship.
For example, the pandemic has brought an onslaught of misinformation to the public sphere, and it has tested the public’s trust in science. Conspiratorial thinking among Republicans has increased in relation to the coronavirus outbreak (Miller 2020). Right-wing media often discussed misinformation about the coronavirus, and viewers of right-wing media were, in turn, more likely to believe the misinformation was factual (Motta, Stecula, and Farhart 2020). The same study also found nonwhite respondents to be more likely to believe this misinformation (Motta, Stecula, and Farhart 2020); however, previous research has shown Black and Hispanic Americans to be more likely to defer to science than white and Asian Americans (Blank and Shaw 2015). While experiences of racial discrimination within the health care system could make Black Americans and other minorities more skeptical of the medical community, Black churches have also supported their communities by providing health education (Rowland and Isaac-Savage 2014). Generally, conservatives and those who believe the Bible is the literal word of God hold less trusting attitudes toward science (Blank and Shaw 2015).
Given the current challenge of the pandemic and the previous literature on the role of religion among different racial groups, I hypothesize that race will be a differentiating identity in how Christians respond to the coronavirus. I expect that Christians of color will be more likely to view the coronavirus as a threat and will act accordingly by limiting their attendance at religious services more than white Christians. However, given the historical prevalence of church-based social support among minoritized groups, I expect Christians of color to be less likely to report that their church has closed. Related to this, I expect that Christians of color will rely on their religious experiences more during the coronavirus outbreak, thus leading to reports of stronger faith. I also consider other variables known to be related to coronavirus responses—namely, Republican partisanship should be related to beliefs about the pandemic, while income, age, and education are all related to the severity of the COVID-19 threat in one’s daily life.
Data and Methods
Do the racial divides seen among Christians continue amid the pandemic? I provide a descriptive analysis of how Christians’ COVID-19 responses vary by race, and I examine the factors driving these decisions. While there are certainly other religious experiences beyond Christianity that have been impacted by the coronavirus outbreak, I focus on Christianity merely for the size of the population and subsequently the samples. The data for these analyses come from two sources, both of which were fielded during the early shutdowns. The first is an original, online survey fielded in late March on 3,136 U.S. adults by Djupe, Lewis, and Burge (2020). Of the respondents, 1,896 identified as either Protestant or Catholic Christians. There are 46 Asian Christians, 194 Black Christians, 112 Hispanic Christians, and 1,288 white Christians. Therefore, the analyses conducted with these data focus on the variation between white Christians and Christians of color. The behavioral outcomes I explore in these data are whether in-person worship has been canceled at a respondent’s church, whether they are still attending in-person services, and if they are practicing social distancing. Additionally, I examine Christians’ attitudes about the coronavirus outbreak through their agreement or disagreement with three statements: “The coronavirus is a major threat,” “Hysteria over the coronavirus is politically motivated,” and “I trust the medical professionals and scientists who have sounded the alarm about the dangers of the coronavirus.” More conservative stances would be downplaying the threat, great belief that the pandemic is a political ploy, and weakened trust in scientists.
The second data source is Wave 66 of the Pew American Trends Panel (ATP), conducted in late April 2020. The ATP is a nationally representative panel of U.S. adults, and this wave included multiple questions related to COVID-19. I focus on two variables: (1) reports of churches halting in-person services and (2) whether a respondent’s religious faith has become stronger or weaker during the coronavirus outbreak. The full sample consists of 10,139 adults, and 6,128 identify as Christians. Among the Christians, 79 identify as Asian, 597 are Black, 1,140 are Hispanic, and 4,078 are white. These sample sizes (with the exception of Asian respondents) allow me to move beyond a dichotomous approach and examine behavior within each racial group.
In the section that follows, I first explore the behavioral outcomes among Christians, and then I turn to their attitudes about COVID-19 and their faith. All models are ordinary least square regressions, and all dependent variables were scaled to between 0 and 1 for ease of interpretation. I present figures of model predictions, but tables for all models can be found in the online appendix. In each figure, I present the fitted values for each model and plot 84 percent confidence intervals, as multiple sources show that comparing two 84 percent confidence intervals is the equivalent of a 95 percent test at the point of overlap (Goldstein and Healy 1995; Knol, Pestman, and Grobbee 2011; MacGregor-Fors and Payton 2013; Payton, Greenstone, and Schenker 2003). In addition to evaluating how Christians’ responses vary by race, I interact race with whether a respondent identifies themselves as a born-again Christian—I refer to this group as evangelical Christians (see Burge and Lewis 2018).
Results—Behavioral Outcomes
Figure 12.1 displays the share of Christians who report their church closed because of the pandemic, split by race and born-again identity. The March sample asks individuals to respond to the statement “In-person worship has been canceled for now because of the coronavirus.” The Pew study asks, “Has the congregation or house of worship you most often attend closed its regular religious services to the public in response to the coronavirus outbreak, or are people still gathering there in person?” Both of these variables are coded as binary responses, with 1 indicating the church has closed in-person services. The independent variables include race and born-again indicators, as well as a control for whether the respondent lives in the South. As shown in the figure, a majority of Christians in both samples report that their church canceled in-person services as a result of the pandemic; over 85 percent of all groups report church cancellations. In most cases, born-again Christians are less likely to say their church canceled in-person services, but Hispanic born-again respondents in the Pew sample report higher levels of church closure.
Figure 12.1 Reported Church Cancellations by Race and Evangelical Identification (Source: March 2020, n = 1,367; 2020 Pew ATP, n = 4,735. Model includes control for living in the South.)
Both samples demonstrate racial differences in Christians’ reports of in-person service cancellations. The March data show white Christians are more likely to report cancellation. While this distinction is statistically significant, born-again identity is not a significant variable. The Pew data reveal similar patterns, and these results suggest a significant difference lies between the reports of Black and white Christians. Black Christians report lower levels of church closures than white Christians, regardless of born-again status. Furthermore, Hispanic Christians are the only group of evangelicals who report higher closures than their non-evangelical counterparts.
As reports of church closures more likely reveal the actions of respondents’ clergy, I also model whether a respondent is still attending in-person services and whether they are practicing social distancing. A majority of respondents were not attending in-person services in the early weeks of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak. Despite varying reports of church closure, Christians of color and white Christians are responding similarly to the pandemic. Evangelicals of both racial groups attend at higher rates, even after controlling for whether services are canceled and their prepandemic attendance rates. Income is also positively associated with increased attendance, while higher education and older age are associated with decreased attendance.
Beyond religious behavior, I examine self-reported social distancing behavior. Respondents in the March sample are asked on a 5-point scale how much they agree (1) or disagree (0) with the following: “I am practicing social distancing (staying home as much as possible, avoiding social contact).” In addition to analyzing the full sample of Christians, I also split the sample between Christians of color and white Christians to explore the variables driving this behavior among both groups. The models suggest a large majority of Christians are practicing social distancing, though white Christians report slightly higher levels of social distancing than Christians of color (p = 0.046).
Of course, we should take a closer examination of possible underlying factors before drawing broader conclusions about the racial differences in social distancing behavior among Christians. The full sample reveals older Christians and those with higher income are social distancing at higher rates. After splitting the sample and analyzing white Christians separately from Christians of color, I find the baseline rate of social distancing among Christians of color and white Christians to be roughly equal. However, income and age remain significantly and positively associated with social distancing among white Christians. This suggests that the racial differences could be driven by the higher levels of income and older age of white Christians compared to Christians of color. White Christians in this sample are much older (fifty vs. thirty-nine) and wealthier on average. Finally, there is a negative association between Republican partisanship and social distancing behavior in the full sample, and this relationship remains significant among white Christians (the estimated effect of partisanship among Christians of color is the same magnitude as it is for whites, but it is not significant).
Results—Attitudes and Beliefs
Next, I turn to Christians’ attitudes about the pandemic using three questions about the coronavirus outbreak itself and one question about their religious experiences during the pandemic. Figure 12.2 displays the results for Christians’ levels of agreement with the following statements: “The coronavirus is a major threat,” “Hysteria over the coronavirus is politically motivated,” and “I trust the medical professionals and scientists who have sounded the alarm about the dangers of the coronavirus.” All responses are measured on a 5-point scale collapsed to run from 0 (strongly disagree) to 1 (strongly agree).
Just as shown in the behavioral models, there tends to be high levels of agreement among Christians on all attitudinal models. On average, Christians from all groups (by born-again and racial identity) agree that the coronavirus is a major threat. While racial identity does not significantly dif-ferentiate this belief in the full sample, Christians of color and white Christians are not equally motivated by the same factors. Among all Christians, evangelicals are more likely to agree that the coronavirus is a major threat. Older age and higher income are also associated with higher levels of agreement. Alternatively, stronger Republican partisanship is associated with higher levels of disagreement with the statement among all Christians, Christians of color, and white Christians. Looking within the subsample of Christians of color, born-again identity remains a strong predictor of believing coronavirus to be a major threat, and age is positively associated with this belief. Among white Christians, however, the relationship between born-again identity and this statement is not significant, while age and income hold their statistically strong relationships.
Figure 12.2 Attitudes toward the Coronavirus Outbreak (Level of Agreement) (Source: March 2020, n = 1,711. Models control for church attendance, party ID, age, income, and education.)
While a majority of all Christians also agree with the statement “Hysteria over the coronavirus is politically motivated,” Christians of color are more likely to believe this than white Christians. Additionally, all models—the full sample and those split on race—show higher church attendance to be positively associated with this belief. However, while stronger Republican partisanship predicts stronger beliefs that coronavirus is politically motivated in the full sample, this relationship remains statistically significant only among white Christians. The weak relationship between partisanship and this attitude among Christians of color is likely related to the fact that there are relatively fewer Christians of color who identify as Republican. Among Christians of color, higher education is negatively associated with the belief that the coronavirus is politically motivated.
The right panel on Figure 12.2 displays Christians’ responses to the following statement: “I trust the medical professionals and scientists who have sounded the alarm about the dangers of the coronavirus.” Christians of color and white Christians hold similar attitudes toward experts. All models show that the stronger Christians identify with the Republican Party, the less they trust experts surrounding the coronavirus. Moreover, among white Christians, age and income again hold a positive relationship; higher income and older white Christians are more likely to trust experts.
In the analyses above, I have examined the reports of church closures, in-person attendance, and social distancing behaviors among Christians, as well as three attitudes about the coronavirus outbreak: the belief that it is a major threat, that it is politically motivated, and that they trust experts who have warned about the dangers of the coronavirus. While Christians of color were more likely to report their church is providing in-person services, they are no more likely to be attending in-person services than white Christians. However, they are less likely to be practicing social distancing, and this may be related to employment and age, as Christians of color report lower income and are younger on average than white Christians in the March sample. While Christians of color and white Christians largely agree in their attitudes about the coronavirus, different variables are more significant predictors among Christians of color and white Christians. While white Christians’ beliefs that the coronavirus outbreak is a major threat is significantly predicted by income, it is not as related to the level of agreement among Christians of color. Similarly, age and income influence white Christians’ agreement that they can trust experts related to the coronavirus outbreak, while Republican partisanship is the strongest predictor among Christians of color. Finally, Republican partisanship increases the belief that the coronavirus is politically motivated among Christians of color, and education decreases this belief, but among white Christians, born-again identity is positively related to this belief.
Given the disparate pressure the coronavirus outbreak has placed on communities of color, have Christians been turning to the church for support as they have in the past? I conclude my analysis by returning to Christians’ religious experiences in the pandemic and examine a broad question about faith amid the coronavirus outbreak. It asks, “As a result of the coronavirus outbreak, has your own religious faith become stronger or weaker (or it hasn’t changed much)?” Respondents can select one of these three options, ordered from weaker (value of 0) to stronger (value of 1) in the model. Figure 12.3 displays these results. As this question comes from the Pew data, I first evaluate the full sample of Christians, and then I examine this relationship within each racial group.
Black and Hispanic Christians report their faith being made stronger by COVID-19 significantly more than white Christians. This follows my expectations given previous research showing the role minority churches play in providing social and mental support to their congregants. Among all racial groups, born-again Christians and Christians with higher church attendance are more likely to respond that their faith strengthened because of the pandemic.
While there are only 150 Asian Christians in the model, Asian Republicans’ faith reportedly weakened, as did the faith among Black and Hispanic Republicans. However, white Christians who identify more strongly as Republican are more likely to report their faith becoming stronger during the pandemic (see full models in the appendix). This could also be due to the negative effects that political heterogeneity can have within church communities. Attending politically homogeneous churches can increase participation (Chan and Phoenix 2020), and perceived political differences within the church can lead to disaffiliation (Djupe, Neiheisel, and Sokhey 2018). Churches are often racially homogeneous, and Christians of color are less likely to be Republicans than white Christians. As such, as white Republican Christians are surrounded by people who share similar partisan beliefs about the coronavirus pandemic, they are not feeling cross-pressured by their partisan and religious communities. However, Republican Christians of color are likely feeling conflict between their partisan and religious communities, weakening their religious attachment.
Figure 12.3 Reported Change in Religious Faith during the Coronavirus Outbreak (Source: 2020 Pew ATP, n = 4,408. Models control for church attendance, party ID, age, income, education, and whether church was closed for the COVID-19 pandemic.)
Conclusion
While most Christians responded to the coronavirus outbreak in similar ways, in some cases, Christians’ attitudes and behaviors did vary significantly by race. Furthermore, Christians of color and white Christians’ decisions were sometimes motivated by different variables. First, I explore Christians’ responses to whether their churches had canceled in-person service, whether they are continuing to attend church in person, and the degree to which they are social distancing. Two data sources show white Christians reporting church closures more than Christians of color, and the Pew data suggest this is primarily driven by the differences between Black and white Christians. The largest gap in reported church closures is between Black and white Christians, whereas Asian and Hispanic Christians fall between these groups. However, regardless of racial identity, there is no significant difference in the rates of in-person attendance between Christians of color and white Christians. While white Christians report they are social distancing more than Christians of color, the results suggest this may be driven by the older age and higher income of white Christians compared to Christians of color. Related to this difference in income levels, people of color are more likely to hold employment that is deemed “essential” during the pandemic, which would lead to lower levels of social distancing as they cannot work from home.
Next, I examine three attitudes about the novel coronavirus among Christians. Again, I find that Christians of color and white Christians hold comparable attitudes about the pandemic, but the variables that best predict their attitudes vary. For example, all Christians hold high agreement that coronavirus is a major threat, and born-again identity is positively associated with this sentiment. I also find broad similarities between Christians of color and white Christians’ agreement that they trust experts surrounding the pandemic. Additionally, Republicans from all models—Christians of color and white Christians—are less likely to agree that coronavirus is a major threat and are less likely to trust experts. Within-group analyses of Christians of color and white Christians reveal different factors are associated with believing the coronavirus is politically motivated. Among Christians of color, education is negatively associated with a belief that the coronavirus is politically motivated. For white Christians, born-again identity is the strongest variable that is positively associated with this belief. Additionally, higher levels of agreement among Christians of color with the belief that coronavirus is politically motivated may be driven by the increased discrimination they have experienced, which has largely been driven by political elites.
Finally, I present whether Christians’ feel their faith has become stronger or weaker amid the pandemic. Here, I find Christians of color to feel their faith has become stronger significantly more than white Christians. Amid a pandemic that has had a disproportionate impact on communities of color, Black and Hispanic Christians report their faith becoming stronger. Additionally, while Republican Christians of color were less likely to report their faith becoming stronger, white Christians’ Republican partisanship is positively associated with this response. The relationship between partisan and religious communities may be contributing to this result, where Republican Christians of color are experiencing conflicting viewpoints in their religious communities, but white Republican Christians are finding wider agreement within their church. This assertion is supported by the other attitudinal models, where Republican identity has a consistent effect in Christians’ attitudes about the pandemic regardless of racial identity. There are still many consistencies among all racial groups; born-again Christians and those who attend church more often report their faith becoming stronger during the pandemic.
While conventional wisdom points to religious experiences to be highly racialized, throughout these analyses, I find that Christians of all races are responding fairly similarly to the pandemic. A majority of Christians of all races report high levels of church closures, online church attendance, and social distancing behavior. Instead, I point to descriptive differences within these groups that drive their behaviors and attitudes, such as age, income, education, and partisanship. I also support previous literature demonstrating born-again identity has a consistently conservatizing effect, regardless of racial identity. However, while overall trends point to similarity between these groups, we know the coronavirus pandemic has hit communities of color much harder than white communities. While responding similarly to COVID-19 in terms of religious behavior and attitudes, the drastically different contexts of the pandemic among people of color and among whites may influence how Christians in these groups rely on their faith throughout the pandemic.
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Material referencing an appendix in this chapter can be found online available here: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/epidemic_among_my_people.