Ranking Faiths

Ranking Faiths Ranking Faiths Religious Stratification in America James D. Davidson and Ralph E. Pyle ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK Published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2011 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Davidson, James D. Ranking Faiths : Religious stratification in America / James D. Davidson and Ralph E. Pyle. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4422-0853-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-0855-1 (electronic) 1. Religion and social status—United States—History. 2. Social stratification—United States—History. 3. United States—Religion. I. Pyle, Ralph E. II. Title. BL2525.D42 2011 306.60973—dc22 2010029032 ` ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America Contents Preface vii 1 Ranking Faiths 1 2 Our Approach 25 3 Origins 43 4 Persistence and Change: 1787–1899 63 5 Persistence and Change: 1900–2010 93 6 Consequences 139 7 Summary and Implications 163 Appendixes 183 Notes 187 References 193 Index 209 About the Authors 219 v Preface If you have ever been to the Grand Canyon, or have seen pictures of it, you have seen the layers of colored rock stacked on top of each other: first red, then gray, then orange, then black, then beige, and so on. If you have ever seen the movie Titanic or a picture of that luxury liner, you know that the passengers had a choice of accommodations: first class (the most luxurious and most expensive), second class (less luxurious and less expensive), and third class (least luxurious and least expensive). If you have ever looked at the graphics in the bottom left-hand corner of the front page of USA Today, you have probably seen rows of people figures, ranked by the number of children they have, their calorie intake, the hours they spend listening to the radio, and so on. These are all images of stratification: in one case, the stratification of rock, in another, the stratification of cabins on a ship, and in yet another, the stratification of people. Sociologists study the stratification of people—by examining lots of things, such as how much education they have, what kinds of work they do, how much money they make, how many and what kinds of civic groups they belong to, and so on. Then, we look to see if the people in the upper strata are different from people in the lower strata on the basis of other things, such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, and religion. If they are different on race, we call that racial stratification. If some nationality groups rank higher than others, that’s called ethnic stratification. When rich kids rank higher than poor kids on something like SAT scores, that’s called class stratification. Gender stratification occurs when men rank higher than women on something or women rank higher than men on something else. When the members of some religious groups have more access than mem- vii viii Preface bers of other faiths do to things like good educations, good jobs, and good incomes, we call that religious stratification. This book is about religious stratification in America. We decided to do a book on this topic for a reason. As people who are interested in inequality, we have noticed that people who study stratification tend to use a conflict perspective. We view society as pretty unstable, due mainly to conflicts be- tween racial groups, ethnic groups, classes, and the sexes, all of which want to maximize their own well-being, even if they harm others in the process. We have always thought it was odd that monographs, journal articles, and textbooks on stratification make almost no mention of stratification based on religious affiliation. They suggest that religion is simply one of many means that elites use to justify their lofty status and to convince others that their lower station in life is fair, given their personal limitations and cultural defi- ciencies. People in the dominant group portray themselves as the righteous and “the elect,” who are entitled to the blessings God has bestowed on them, and everyone else as people who aren’t as successful in life because, frankly, they don’t deserve it. On the other hand, as people who specialize in the study of religion, we are aware of many books and journal articles showing how religious groups rank in terms of the socioeconomic status of their members. For example, the leading textbooks in the sociology of religion contain chapters indicating that the members of some religious groups are more educated, more prosperous, and more influential than people belonging to other faiths. However, when it comes to interpreting these findings, religion scholars don’t use conflict theory. Instead, we rely on functionalist theory (which says that religion contributes to well-being of society by offering people in different social strata beliefs and practices that are appropriate for their station in life) and/or Weber’s thesis that belonging to some religious groups (especially Protestant denominations rooted in Calvinist theology) is more conducive to worldly success than belonging to other faiths (such as traditional Catholicism). Thus, there is a disconnect. Specialists in the study of stratification have found conflict theory useful in explaining stratification based on race, ethnicity, class, and gender, but have not used it to study stratification based on religious affiliation. Meanwhile, specialists in the study of religion have documented religious group differences in socioeconomic status, but don’t use a conflict approach to link their analyses to studies of inequalities based on race, ethnicity, class, and gender. As people who are interested in both religion and stratification, we thought we would try to do something about this curious situation. To that end, we decided to use a conflict approach to study religious stratification in America. If we succeed, our work might encourage others who study stratification Preface ix to give more serious consideration to religious affiliation, and it might encourage others who study religion to give more serious consideration to conflict theory. But, as we see it, this is much more than an intramural exercise among sociologists. It also is our way of calling Americans’ attention to a type of inequality that is often overlooked and not well understood. We want to show that—like stratification based on race, ethnicity, class, and gender—stratification based on a person’s religious affiliation has been part of the American experience since colonial times. We want to explain how it developed, how it has persisted and changed over the years, how it has affected our society, and what Americans can and should do about it. Chapter 3 is an edited and revised version of our article “The Origins of Religious Stratification in Colonial America,” which was published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, volume 42, March 2003, pages 57–75. Some parts of that article also appear in chapter 1. Chapters 1 and 6 contain data and text that were first published in Davidson’s article “Reli- gious Stratification: Its Origins, Persistence, and Consequences,” Sociology of Religion, volume 69, Winter 2008, pages 371–95. We want to thank our wives, Anna and Aloka, for their kindnesses when they must have felt that we were wedded to this book and not them. We also are grateful to Deborah Coe, Rachel Kraus, Kris Morgan, Scott Morrissey, and David Reyes, who have worked with us on specific parts of our analysis. We also extend thanks to colleagues, students, and other people who have contributed to this volume by listening to our presentations, asking penetrat- ing questions, reviewing our papers, and offering constructive criticisms and suggestions. We also thank Sarah Stanton, Janice Braunstein, and Jin Yu for their professionalism and patience in the production of this book. Finally, we are grateful for our parents who, without knowing it, planted the seeds that grew into this project. 1 Ranking Faiths Although the United States prides itself on being a land of equal opportu- nity, in fact, some people have always had more access to resources such as higher education, wealth, and political power. To this day, whites have more social, economic, and political influence than blacks. Throughout U.S. history, people with northern European (Anglo-Saxon) backgrounds have had more power, privilege, and prestige than people with other ethnic ancestries. People who are born into wealthy families have always had more access to first-rate educations, lucrative careers, and political offices than people who are born into poverty. Despite recent gains, women still have fewer opportunities for worldly success than men. Thus, American society is stratified in many ways: by race, ethnicity, class, and gender. With whites still having more opportunities than blacks, the persistence of racial stratification cannot be denied. The fact that Anglo-Saxons have had the upper hand on other nationalities shows that ethnic stratification has been a part of our nation’s history.

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