Interracial Dating Among Church Goers of Same Race Less Likely to Interracial Date

The debate of whether love is taught or inside us all along has had an interesting addition recently. Church has long been known to be one of the most segregated areas in our modern culture. With churches either being set up for whites or blacks, the insides of these religious institutions on a Sunday morning could easily harken back to a time in the segregated southern United States. There was recently a study done by David Briggs of the Association of Religion Data Archives who found that church goers who attend churches with few members of other races are much less likely to participate in a relationship with a person of another race. 

Although simply a correlation with no real causation, it can be wondered if the association of these two factors means that being raised around people of one race makes you less likely to want an interracial relationship in your own life. It seems like an obvious conclusion to draw, but then that would mean ultimately with the world getting more and more integrated that people will eventually all be open to interracial relationships. The melting pot of the centers of our world are spilling over into the smaller towns, media, and the news in such a way that everyone, everywhere has crushes or thoughts about someone of another race these days in modern society. 

Another interesting aspect to this research was this: in Catholicism, 50% of those who attend church rarely or never, have dated someone of another race, whereas only 25% of those who attend church regularly have dated someone of another race. This shows another instance of the same statistic.

I think the coincidence of less interracial relationships with people who attend mostly segregated churches would most likely only stem from a lack of exposure, and to a much lesser extent bigotry taught from their more elderly relatives, not any aspect of the religion itself. As a matter of fact, it has ben shown in another famous study that those who study the Bible more often are more likely to be open to interracial relationships. Maybe it is simply the social culture of a segregated church environment that contributes to these factors. Religion after all does teach people to love and be open to everyone.