Shaping Race-Related Messages: The Important Role of Religious Socialization Messages and African American Families

• In Event: 3-216 - The Role of Religious Socialization in Black Youth Adjustment

Integrative Statement

Purpose: To explore how African American families’ perceived religious socialization messages (i.e., biblical principles, social legacy, & otherworldliness) shape adolescent opinions about the appropriateness of racial socialization processes as it pertains to education, familial, and religious experiences. Furthermore, based on previous literatures on the important role of religion in the lives of African Americans, parent’s and adolescent’s perceptions of the religious messages communicated to them from their church about race was explored to understand how the African American church serves as a socialization agent.

Methodology: One hundred and fifty-seven African American families were from a larger study that examined religious and racial socialization practices. Participants were recruited from 18 predominantly African American churches in two midwestern cities. Adolescents’ age ranged from 12 to 19 (Mage= 15). The Scale of Racial Socialization for Adolescents (SORS-A; Stevenson, 1994) was used to assess adolescent opinions about specific types of racial socialization processes in education, family relations, religion, and societal views about race. The scale consists of four subscales: Spiritual and religious coping (e.g., religion is an important part of a person’s life), extended family caring (e.g., spending good time with relatives is as important for parents as for their children), cultural pride reinforcement (e.g., Black parents should teach their children about racism), and racism awareness teaching (e.g., our society is fair toward Black people). Cronbach’s alpha ranges from .60 to .68. The African American Protestant Faith Communities Scale (AAPFCS) (Martin, unpublished) examines the theological orientations within African American Protestant faith communities. Three subscales represent the underlying dimensions of the AAPFCS. Biblical principles refer to the universal truths communicated through the Ten Commandments and the common genesis of all humanity created in God’s Image. Social legacy is defined as both implicit and explicit application of socialization by African Americans about faith to empower, transform, and deliver their communities during different historical periods-chattel slavery, racial segregation, and Modern Civil Rights. Otherworldliness focuses on the individual sanctification, which exclusively emphasizes the preparation to enter heaven. Cronbach’s alpha ranges from .75 to .81.

Results: A multivariate regression analysis was conducted to examine how parent and adolescent perceptions of religious messages was associated with adolescents’ thoughts about specific types of racial socialization messages (see Table 1). The findings revealed that adolescent’s who reported higher levels of biblical principles being communicated from their church reported higher levels of spiritual and religious coping messages. Parent’s who perceived their church as communicating social legacy messages and adolescent’s who endorsed high levels of perceiving biblical principle messages reported higher levels of extended family caring messages. Adolescent’s perceptions of perceiving biblical principles were also associated with higher levels of cultural pride reinforcement. Lastly, parent’s who perceived higher amounts of other-worldly messages from their church was associated with adolescent’s reporting higher levels of racial awareness teaching.

Conclusion: The findings highlight the important role of the Black church as a socializing agent for African American families. Additionally, African American churches are not monolithic in the way that they socialize parents about race.

Authors

• Sheretta T. Butler-Barnes, Washington University in St. Louis
  Presenting Author

• Pamela P. Martin, Prairie View A&M University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Meredith O. Hope, University of Michigan School of Public Health
  Non-Presenting Author