Are white evangelical Protestants lower class? A partial test of church-sect theory.
Testing hypotheses derived from church-sect theory and contemporary research about changes in evangelical Protestants' social status, I use repeated cross-sectional survey data spanning almost four decades to examine changes in the social-class hierarchy of American religious traditions. While there is little change in the social-class position of white evangelical Protestants from the early 1970s to 2010, there is considerable change across birth cohorts. Results from hierarchical age-period-cohort models show: (1) robust, across-cohort declines in social-class differences between white evangelical Protestants and liberal Protestants, affiliates of "other" religions, and the unaffiliated, (2) stability in social-class differences between white evangelical Protestants and moderate, Pentecostal, and nondenominational Protestants, (3) moderate across-cohort growth in social-class differences between white evangelical Protestants and Catholics, and (4) these patterns vary across indicators of social class. The findings in this article provide partial support for church-sect theory as well as other theories of social change that emphasize the pivotal role of generations.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 740 Oldfather Hall, P.O. Box 880324, Lincoln, NE 68588-0324, United States. Electronic address: pschwadel2@unl.edu.
Philip
P
Schwadel
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002410:Catholicism; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D033303:Protestantism; D012922:Social Change; D012923:Social Class; D012924:Social Conditions; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D044465:White People
Evangelical Protestant; Generations; Religion; Social change; Social class