Seeking to broaden the scope of psychological pathologies associated with conservatism, academics now turn their meta-analytical barrels on religion. University of Southern California social psychologist Wendy Wood, in “Why Don’t We Practice What We Preach? A Meta-Analytic Review of Religious Racism,” delves into the “religion-racism paradox” and discovers that racism is deeply embedded in organized religion which, by its very nature, encourages people to accept one fundamental belief system as superior to all others. The required value judgment creates a kind of us-versus-them conflict, in which members of a religious group develop ethnocentric attitudes toward anyone perceived as different. The problem for those benighted followers of organized religion is their moral sense of right and wrong. “Religion creates a very strong sense of a moral right and wrong within the group,” says Wood. “When you do that, members of the group will be more likely to derogate anyone who is not part of it.” Wood and her co-authors Deborah Hall of Duke University and David Matz of Augsburg College focused their “study” on Christians, “mostly white and Protestant.” The problem, it seems, is that these white Protestants are more likely than agnostics and atheists to rate conservative “life values” as
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