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Look, everyone prefers to be with people who share their interests, perspectives, and cultures. There’s nothing really wrong with that. The ‘turn’ that must be guarded against, by any group, is to begin to “essentialize” people outside that group–to assign just a few, usually negative, characteristics to them and then actually believe these characteristics to be only and true nature of those people. This is the dangerous ‘turn’ that American Christianity has now taken and is on display everywhere.
Although totally dominant politically, socially, and culturally, American Christianity–increasingly conservative, restrictive, and exclusionist–still consider itself “persecuted” and “at war” with the rest of society. This is pretty much a definition of xenophoic behavior and while I cannot say xenophobia emanates from religion itself, religion and its gaterhing places are where xenophobia is cultivated and nourished.