RACE, RELIGION, AND SUPPORT FOR THE DEATH PENAI,TY: A RESEARCH NOTE*

Although prior research as shown race and affiliation with a fundamental-ist Protestant church to be important predictors of support for the death penalty, this research as given little attention to the possible combined effect of race and religious affiliation on views about capital punishment. Do blacks and whites with similar religious affiliations view the use of capi-tal punishment in the same way? I test three explanations of the relation-ship between race and religious affiliation with views about the use of capital punishment: political views, salience of religion, and religious ideol-ogy. Black and white fundamentalists are very similar on measures of reli-gious behavior and beliefs, but black fundamentalists show the least support for the death penalty, while white fundamentalists show the great-est support. This pattern persists even after controlling for the respon-dent's political views, salience of religion, and religious ideology. These results call into question the assumption of homogeneity among fundamen-talist Protestants and indicate that future research on sensitive moral, so-cial, and political issues should consider dual racial and religious contexts in understanding public views on these issues. In the last four decades, public opinion in the United States has shifted dramatically in regard to criminal punishments, especially the use of capital punishment. Gallup polls reveal that public sup-port for the death penalty declined gradually through the 1960s, reaching a low of 44 % in 1966, but has gradually increased over the past 30 years; thus 75 to 80 % of the individuals now polled support capital punishment for convicted murderers (Moore 1995; Zeisel and Gallup 1989). Public support for capital punishment remains high even when researchers include life imprisonment without the option of parole as an alternative (Sandys and McGarrell 1994