Religion and Subjective Social Class in the United States

Abstract

Subjective social class identities—lower, working, middle, and upper—are conditioned by culture and social interactions. I argue that conservative Christianity influences subjective class identification because conservative Christian social networks are highly insular, and its culture prioritizes lower- and working-class ideologies. Using nationally representative data, I find that conservative Christians—operationalized with views of the Bible and religious tradition—are relatively likely to identify as lower and working class, and unlikely to identify as middle and upper class; that these associations are partially but not wholly mediated by higher education and family income; and that there are robust associations between religion and subjective class among those with a bachelor’s degree and above-average family incomes, but not among less-educated and lower-income Americans. These results indicate that conservative Christianity promotes a specific class culture, and that this class culture more closely aligns with biblical literalism than with affiliation with evangelical Protestant churches.