What Parshall and I were doing that day was working to reduce “intergroup bias,” ultimately in the hope of fostering greater, more unified support for religious freedom. According to reams of empirical studies, group (or tribal) identity is core to who we are as humans—so much so that loyalty to our group affects us both psychologically and physically. Rejection, stigma, or social isolation literally triggers a physical assault on our body; on the flip side, when we are loyal to our group and receive its affirmation, we feel confident and happy. But tribal membership can also become toxic if our group (the “in-group”) feels threatened by the “out-group.” Studies show that feelings of threat lead to hostility, ranging from prejudice to a desire to strip rights from the out-group, and in extreme cases, even violence and genocide. 

 

That’s exactly what Gaffney, as a member of the in-group (NRB’s conservative Christian audience) was trying to do: he was evoking bogeymen like “Muslim Brotherhood” and so-called “shari’a supremacists” to make the rest of his group feel threatened so that it would react to a member of the out-group (me) with hostility. Luckily, Parshall foiled his plan. 

 

Before I even became acquainted with the science of group identity, I had developed my own principles of prejudice reduction. These were based on my extensive interactions with conservative Christian audiences around issues of religious freedom. In the NRB context, I applied them this way: 

 

1. Center the human; decenter the politics: This is not a special interest pleading. Gaffney’s demonization of me is a proven partisan tactic, used by all sides, but we are not those caricatures. We are people with real spiritual yearnings whose right to exercise those beliefs must be respected.  

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2. Utilize legal literacy: Gaffney is deeply wrong in pitting Muslims’ and Christians’ rights against each other. The very nature of human rights, including the right to religious freedom, is that      protection for some is protection for none. If the government          selectively protects religions that it likes and does not protect        the ones it doesn’t like, all beliefs are vulnerable to the arbitrary      discretion of those in power.

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​3. Avoid condemnation/judgment: I understand that people’s fears of seemingly foreign Muslims might make one more receptive to Gaffney’s message—particularly at a time when the world presents so many uncertainties and potential threats.      While I worry about the fear manifesting in problematic actions, I understand the fear as fundamentally human. 

 

After I started reading about intergroup bias and prejudice-reduction strategies, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I had been on exactly the right track. Without knowing the words for it, I had developed a strategy that de-escalated feelings of threat, expressed empathy, and focused on what social scientists call “superordinate goals” (in this case, a robust conception of religious freedom). 

 

I had a general idea about what was going on and how one might go about solving the problems. I had something to build on. So, I did.

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My first insight was to map the groups onto the political divide. Anyone watching the religion and politics scene in the US and the strategic messaging by Democrats and Republicans, particularly around the time of presidential elections, notices that conservative White Christians are spoken favorably by one side and unfavorably by the other side. And the exact opposite groups speaks favorably and unfavorably about American Muslims. Each group signals a political agenda and, in this way, serves as a proxy for the opposing political parties.

 

It’s a manifestation of group identity and group loyalty, which exert a strong, almost impenetrable, pull on us as humans. Social scientists explain that group loyalty is core to who we are. Group loyalty helps people avoid the strong psychological and physical effects of rejection. Studies have shown that we don’t just experience social isolation or stigma psychologically; these experiences also trigger a physical assault on our body. What this means in practice is that, even evolutionarily, humans are programmed to signal their allegiance to their tribe as a way of avoiding the loneliness and stress that comes with being cast out. 

Our allegiance to our political tribes is no different. Elections can become pure team rivalry. Studies have found that in the election context, winning is what’s most important, and Americans are driven by what they oppose rather than what they support. For example, a 2016 Pew study found that “very unfavorable views” of the Democratic Party increased voting much more than a “deeper affection” for the Republican Party. Among Americans who are highly engaged in politics, this disparity became even starker—the more they hated the other side, the more likely they were to donate money to their own party. This may explain why politicians focus so much of their messaging on generating fear and hatred of the other party.

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In our present political climate, these group rivalries pose ever more serious implications because of what political scientist Lilliana Mason in Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity calls the emergence of “mega-identities”: “A single vote can now indicate a person’s partisan preference as well as his or her religion, race, ethnicity, gender, neighborhood, and favorite grocery store. This is no longer a single social identity. Partisanship can now be thought of as a mega-identity, with all the psychological and behavioral magnifications that implies.” 

 

In this ever-widening circle, almost nothing is apolitical anymore. This includes religion and diverse religious communities. In my work, I have a core thesis: In the US today, Muslims—and especially liberal advocacy on behalf of Muslims—are traits of the liberal mega-identity, and opposition to Muslims is a trait of the conservative mega-identity. And conservative Christians indisputably belong to the conservative mega-identity.

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Now, in-group favoritism doesn’t always result in out-group bias. That is, you can extend trust, cooperation, and empathy to your in-group but not the out-group, and while this is a form of discrimination, it doesn’t involve any sort of aggression or hostility toward the out-group. But tribalism in the religious context has been shown to result in out-group hostility. And there is evidence that Muslims, more than any other religious out-group, are the targets of this hostility. Perceptions of threat are part of the reason why. Oxford political scientists Miles Hewstone, Mark Rubin, and Hazel Willis write: “[T]he constraints normally in place, which limit intergroup bias to in-group favoritism, are lifted when out-groups are associated with stronger emotions.” Stronger emotions include things like feeling the out-group is moving against you: “[A]n out-group seen as threatening may elicit fear and hostile actions.” Whereas “high status” groups (groups that are a numerical majority and have power) don’t feel threatened by minorities when the status gap is very wide, they are more likely to feel threatened when the status gap is closing. In the US today, the Christian in-group does not feel the status gap is wide, and they have good reason to feel this way. 

 

First, White preponderance is on the decline. In 1965, White Americans constituted 84 percent of the US population, and now Pew says White Americans will be a minority by 2055. In 1996, White Protestant Christians still made up two-thirds of the population. Today, they don’t even constitute a majority. What’s more, the decline of White Protestant America has brought with it a perceived end for some to the cultural and institutional world built primarily by White Protestants in the United States. 

With this perceived end nearing, conservative White evangelicals feel besieged, and just as studies on intergroup bias predict, that vulnerability is being turned against the out-group. One aspect of this is revealed in surveys comparing perceptions of discrimination against Christians versus Muslims. In 2019, Pew found that Democrats and those who lean Democratic “are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say Muslims face at least some discrimination in the U.S. (92% vs. 69%)….At the same time, Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to say evangelicals face discrimination (70% vs. 32%).” In 2017, the Rasmussen Report and PRRI found very similar discrepancies.

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Unfortunately, the hostility goes beyond merely dismissing anti-Muslim discrimination to outright hostility and even attempts at limiting Muslims’ religious rights (precisely the trend I outline in When Islam Is Not a Religion). In this way, religious freedom (and not just the individual religious groups) in the US today has become a partisan tool. 

 

Political scientists Daniel Bennett and Logan Strother have explored these subtleties in their work. In one study, respondents were told that the government had blocked a house of worship. The house of worship was first described generically; then it was described as an evangelical church; and in the third scenario, it was a mosque. When Bennett and Strother compared how respondents felt about protecting the house of worship, they learned that if you liked Muslims more than evangelicals, you were more interested in protecting the mosque. On the flipside, only 40 percent of respondents who felt more warmly toward evangelicals wanted to help the mosque. 

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The tribal approach to religious freedom ultimately rests in the deprivation (or perceived deprivation) of Christian conservatives’ rights. That feeling of persecution is further accentuated for them when it is contrasted with the apparent liberal championing of Muslims’ rights. The idea is that Muslims are already well-protected, and Christians are persecuted, and in that comparison, many conservatives find cause to dismiss, even oppose, Muslims’ rights. 

 

The work of political scientist Andrew Lewis begins to probe this phenomenon. In one study, Lewis looked at how conservatives and liberals respond to religious liberty claims differently depending on how the information is presented to them. First, respondents read about Muslim truck drivers who had to choose between transporting alcohol in violation of their religious beliefs or losing their jobs. Respondents then learned that either a well-known liberal or conservative law firm was representing the truck drivers in court. 

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Lewis found that Democratic respondents were more supportive of the religious freedom claims when they were told a liberal law firm represented the drivers. They were also more likely to support conservative Christian claims after they were exposed to religious freedom claims by Muslims. As for conservative respondents, they were less likely to shift attitudes in support of Muslims but were marginally more likely to support them if a conservative law firm was defending the Muslim claimants versus, say, the unambiguously liberal ACLU. 

 

That last finding reflects the opposing political mega-identities that are involved. Conservatives are not only opposed to Muslims as a religious out-group, but when Muslims work with liberals (as they often do), they are also opposed as a political out-group. Several other studies bear out this point: For example, in a study published in 2016, a group of political scientists at Brigham Young University (BYU) measured Americans’ levels of unease with and willingness to sanction negative speech about different religious groups. They found that Democrats “express the greatest unease—and the greatest willingness to sanction those who make the disapproving comments—with statements about Jews and Muslims.”

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However, they also found that Republicans exhibit “exceptionally low levels of discomfort with and unwillingness to sanction negative comments about Muslims.” In a polarized culture, where our mega-identities rule, if liberals penalize anti-Muslim speech, conservatives make sure not to. It’s not that Republicans are above penalizing speech; they just don’t do it for Muslims—partly because Democrats do that, and Republicans don’t want to be like Democrats. 

 

The BYU researchers found exactly these group dynamics: “[P]artisans of different stripes express strikingly distinctive patterns of concern.” They also found that the groups differed the most on the Muslim question: Muslims “most readily experience the effects of group-based religious bias.” Republicans “sanctioned [penalized] disparaging statements about every religious group but one: Muslims. Whereas more than 70% of Republicans sanctioned statements about all other religious groups … only 38% of Republicans sanctioned commentators making statements about Muslims.” 

 

The researchers used social identity theory to explain their findings. Depending on which group you belong to, you face different social costs when you penalize negative speech about Muslims. For Republicans, the social costs—repudiation by their tribe—are highest for penalizing anti-Muslim speech. For Democrats, the social costs for the same thing are much lower, and the social benefits much higher. A series of studies conducted between November 2015 and June 2016 also highlight these costs and benefits. 

The University of Maryland conducted three national polls measuring Americans’ views about Islam and Muslims. The last survey was done just days after the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, where a Muslim attacker killed forty-nine people and wounded fifty-three others. The polls found that Americans’ attitudes about Muslims improved between each of the three surveys, even after the Orlando shooting.