Denominational and racial and ethnic differences in fatalism

Social scientists have long been interested in the relationship between rel igion and various measures of fatalism. Theodicies, or religious explanatio ns for negative (and positive) outcomes in life, suggest that religion and religiosity should be related to measures of fatalism. Race and ethnicity h ave also been linked to fatalistic attitudes. In this paper I examine the r elationship between religious denomination, religiosity, race/ethnicity and a measure of fatalism. The data are from Wave I of the national survey Ame ricans Changing Lives, a national probability sample of 3617 people that in cludes an oversample of African Americans. The results indicate that both d enominational types and race and ethnicity continue to be related in import ant ways to the measure of fatalism. The differences remain strong even whe n age, gender income, education, and socio-economic status of occupations a re controlled statistically.