Religious Affiliations

Abstract

Durkheim had argued that Protestantism decreased homicidal tendencies while Catholicism tended to increase it. However, other writers have maintained that fundamental Protestantism may increase the tendency toward homicide. This study examines the question by relating religious affiliation data by race obtained from a 1916 Census Department study to homicidal rates in the rural South for 1920, and finds that both Protestant and Catholic affiliations for whites are related to less homicide, while for blacks religious affiliation is unrelated to the homicide rate. For the case of the South, these results tend to refute Durkheim's position that Catholicism increases the tendency toward homicide.