Nonfundamentalist church members show prejudice levels matching the nonaffiliated.

Evidence

If one takes church membership as the criterion for being religious, then as Gorsuch and Aleshire (1974) observed in their influential review, “the results are clear and consistent. Church members are more prejudiced than those who have never joined a church. All the studies found the same relationship, which was statistically significant when tested” (p. 283). — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1977 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Given this powerful conclusion, researchers have tried to find a subset of church members who are as unprejudiced as those who belong to no church. Gorsuch and Aleshire (1974) pointed out, for example, that many people say they belong to a church but do not attend it. If these people are highly prejudiced, they will give religion a bad name in studies that just examine membership. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1978 (#complicates, via linked claim)

So if you want to know who the nonprejudiced Christians are, I think you can say, for a start, the nonfundamentalist ones, in general.’ To illustrate, 81 of the 491 parents in this study said they had no religious affiliation. These “nonaffiliated” subjects pulled down lower scores on the prejudice and other authoritarian aggression measures than any Christian denomination (Altemeyer and Hunsberger, 1992, table 3)—reaffirming the old “powerful conclusion” about nonaffiliates being relatively unprejudiced. Their means equaled 76.8 on the Ethnocentrism Scale, 49.1 on ATH, 16.2 on Posse- Radicals, and 28.0 on Trials. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2127 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Religious priming elevates prejudice against LGBT people and atheists beyond other targets. — Annetta Snell and Miron Zuckerman and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 40; Church members are consistently more prejudiced than nonmembers — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1977; Religious upbringing and church membership correlate with higher prejudice. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2526 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Church members are consistently more prejudiced than nonmembers #complicates (0.85) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1977
• People with no religious affiliation show less prejudice than any Christian denomination #complicates (0.72) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2127
• Church attendance, not mere membership, moderates the religion-prejudice link #complicates (0.72) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1978