Faith in Action? Exploring the Relationship between Public and Private Religiosity, Race, and Social Justice among Christian College Students

Abstract

Awareness of social justice issues and their perceived importance varies significantly across many demographic variables including racial and religious identities. Less is known, however, about how the centrality of one’s own religiosity is associated with social justice attitudes and actions. This study explored the relationship between dimensions of religiosity and social justice importance and actions for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and non-Hispanic White students. Christian college students ( N = 168) completed measures of public and private religiosity, the perceived connection between faith and social justice, as well as personal attitudes and actions pertaining to issues of social justice. The results demonstrated positive associations between religiosity and the extent to which faith was believed to inform social justice attitudes for BIPOC and White students. Despite the perception that religiosity informed one’s social justice attitudes and actions, religiosity was only positively associated with actual social justice engagement for BIPOC students. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses demonstrated that public religiosity was the best predictor of beliefs that one’s religion motivated activities related to social justice work, but private religiosity was the strongest predictor of actual social justice engagement. These findings underscore a prominent disconnect in the extent to which religiosity is believed to be, and is actually, associated with social justice attitudes and actions.