Religious Congregants' Affirmation of Lesbian and Gay Individuals in Church: The Role of Social Empathy

Background: Religious belonging is associated with various positive health outcomes. For sexual minority populations, including lesbian and gay (LG) individuals, participation in religion can be both a protective and risk factor. Such participation is often a source of stress as many religious settings promulgate heterosexism. For LG individuals, exiting one’s faith may not always be the path of least harm, however, as doing so can remove supportive pillars (e.g., family support, connectedness to community). Faith communities that provide affirmation to sexual minority populations offer a path for LG persons to ease tension between sexual and religious identities. Such identity affirmation is associated with emotional and spiritual growth, positive self-concept, and decreased adverse mental health outcomes. This study explored factors associated with affirming attitudes among religious congregants with a specific focus on a construct termed social empathy. Social empathy adds to interpersonal empathy by requiring a contextual understanding of systemic barriers faced by outgroups as well as macro perspective-taking.

Methods: Data were derived from two cross-sectional studies. In Study 1, we surveyed an online sample of U.S. adults (n=127), while in Study 2, we recruited students from a public university in the U.S. South (n=123). In both studies, inclusion criteria included identifying as a heterosexual churchgoer. Participants completed measures assessing attitudes toward LG individuals in religious settings (Study 1, 2 a=.94, .81) and interpersonal and social empathy. The latter was assessed via the Social Empathy Index, which includes two subscales: contextual understanding of systemic barriers (a=.91, .87) and macro perspective-taking (a=.82, .67). We produced bivariate correlations and constructed OLS regression models for each sample. The empathy subscales served as focal predictors and were entered alongside control variables. We hypothesized that social empathy would be positively associated with affirming attitudes.

Results: Our hypothesis was partially supported. Across both studies, the bivariate results suggest that each of the social empathy facets—contextual understanding (Study 1 r =.36, p <.001; Study 2 r =.27, p =.003) and macro perspective-taking (r =.38, p <.001; r =.21, p =.02)—is significantly associated with affirming attitudes. In the multivariate models, macro perspective-taking was significantly associated with affirming attitudes in Study 1 (β =.26, p =.03) but not in Study 2 (β =.08, p =.45). Contextual understanding was not a significant predictor in either multivariate model. Other significant correlates in the Study 1 model were liberal political ideology and educational attainment. The only significant predictor in the Study 2 model was religiosity, with participants who scored higher endorsing less affirming attitudes.

Implications: While interpersonal empathy is frequently emphasized in social work practice, our findings reinforce existing literature suggesting that social empathy is crucial to fostering affirming attitudes toward marginalized outgroups. The macro perspective-taking facet of social empathy in particular should be further investigated as a potential intervention target to increase religious congregants’ affirming attitudes toward LG individuals. We discuss possible reasons for the discrepancy in results between the online adult and student samples as well as a next step of collaborative intervention research that flows from our findings.