Trust behaviors generate trust, regardless of race or religion or ethnicity

From Religious People Are Trusted BecauseThey Are Viewed as Slow Life-HistoryStrategists by Jordan W. Moon , Jaimie Arona Krems, and Adam B. Cohen.  From the Abstract:

Religious people are more trusted than nonreligious people. Although most theorists attribute these perceptions to the beliefs of religious targets, religious individuals also differ in behavioral ways that might cue trust. We examined whether perceivers might trust religious targets more because they heuristically associate religion with slow life-history strategies. In three experiments, we found that religious targets are viewed as slow life-history strategists and that these findings are not the result of a universally positive halo effect; that the effect of target religion on trust is significantly mediated by the target’s life-history traits (i.e., perceived reproductive strategy); and that when perceivers have direct information about a target’s reproductive strategy, their ratings of trust are driven primarily by his or her reproductive strategy, rather than religion. These effects operate over and above targets’ belief in moralizing gods and offer a novel theoretical perspective on religion and trust.

If you are having trouble navigating the actual intent of this Abstract, their opening paragraphs are much clearer.

Research has consistently demonstrated that religious targets are viewed as more trustworthy than nonreligious targets (e.g., Tan & Vogel, 2008), and, similarly, atheists tend to be distrusted (Gervais, Shariff, & Norenzayan, 2011). Gervais and colleagues (2017) found that, across 13 nations, the majority of people—even atheists—tend to associate immoral behavior with atheism.

The prevailing view on religion, irreligion, and trust posits that intuitions about religion and trust are the result of cultural group selection, with shared beliefs in punishing deities allowing large-scale cooperation to evolve (Norenzayan et al., 2016; Purzycki et al., 2016; Roes & Raymond, 2003). In this view, religious behavior should facilitate trust primarily toward coreligionists, particularly when it is diagnostic of belief in moralizing deities. This framework has garnered significant empirical support (e.g., Shariff, Willard, Andersen, & Norenzayan, 2016). 

Here, we propose an additional reason why religious behavior might cultivate trust. Specifically, religious individuals tend to differ from nonreligious individuals in more than merely belief—they also tend to behave in ways consistent with a slow life-history (LH) strategy (i.e., they tend to be sexually restricted, invested in family, nonimpulsive, and nonaggressive; Baumard & Chevallier, 2015). These traits are associated with cooperativeness and prosociality. One possibility, then, is that perceivers use religious affiliation or behavior as a cue to infer these traits. Perception of these traits may facilitate trust above and beyond shared belief in supernatural punishment and may be particularly important in explaining why religious behavior can also facilitate trust in out-group perceivers (Hall, Cohen, Meyer, Varley, & Brewer, 2015; McCullough, Swartwout, Carter, Shaver, & Sosis, 2016).

Less cryptically still.  Everyone (the religious and atheists) distrust atheists and have greater trust in the religious.  This is not just about co-religionists trusting one another.  It is hypothesized that the religious actually have different, and more trusted patterns of behaviors.  Behaviors trusted by atheists and out-group alike.  It is hypothesized that it is not religion which inspires trust in the religious but more trusted behaviors.  

And this is what they find.  That people do not necessarily trust the religious per se, they trust the behaviors that the religious manifest.  

The body of the research is kind of turgid and there is a lot of discussion abut both academic theories and clear concern about discrimination and race and similar issues which overcomplicates and obfuscates  their work and findings.  They are using too small groups to really sustain their conclusions.  

However, I think they are directionally right.  There is plenty of additional evidence in other fields which coalesce around the central hypothesis.  The more your behaviors manifest traditional norms as characterized by education valuation and achievement, work ethic, adherence to social norms, family formation, family and community pro-sociability, etc. the more likely you are to be trusted by others, even, or perhaps especially, by out-groups.

As an extreme example - If we examined trust responses from host nation communities to church-going, hard-working, pro-social, norms abiding, intact émigré families from Nigeria, Haiti, and Jamaica into the US, I would anticipate that we would see pretty high trust responses.  Trust behaviors generate trust, regardless of race or religion or ethnicity.