Intersectional Stratification: Race,Religion,and Status Attainment

Abstract

Research repeatedly shows that stratification occurs through racial classification and systemic racism. Scholars have also shown that stratification in wealth, education, and occupational attainment for Americans varies by religious affiliation. In this article, we incorporate theories of intersectionality and complex religion to study the ways that religion stratifies status attainment within racial groups in the United States. We hypothesize that relational proximity to predominantly white denominations increases status attainment for racial minorities in the United States. Using data from the 2000-2016 waves of the General Social Survey, we find that Black Evangelicals have higher levels of occupational prestige than Black non-Evangelicals. We argue that this is because of networks of social capital via multiracial churches that allow Black Evangelicals access to increasing levels of occupational prestige.

Keywords

Religion stratification race occupations

Introduction

Research repeatedly shows that stratification occurs through racial classification and systemic racism. This results in limited wealth accumulation for minority groups across generations (Blau and Duncan 1967; Bergmann 1974; Portes 1974). Scholars have also found that stratification in wealth, education, and occupational attainment for Americans varies by religious affiliation (Keister 2011; Sherkat 1997, 2012; Keister and Fulton 2015). Little is known about the ways that different religious affiliations affect attainment outcomes within racial groups. This paper fills the gaps in our understanding of how religion and race interact to create differing occupational outcomes within racial categories.

Analyzing two social identities in relationship to one another is a form of intersectionality. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1991) groundbreaking theory of intersectionality argues that the ways we form our policy in the United States are shaped by a narrow, one-sided understanding of inequality. While Crenshaw uses intersectionality to focus primarily on the ways federal and local policy affects people with intersecting marginal identities (i.e., Black women) differently, this study will focus on the ways multiple intersecting identities—race and religion—shape attainment outcomes in American society.

Melissa Wilde’s (2016) theory of complex religion complements intersectionality with its specific focus on religion. Wilde argues that religion, when intersected with other positions in society—especially race, class, and gender—can be used to understand with greater nuance the impact of religiosity and religious affiliation on other social behaviors, such as political party affiliation. Because of the multifaceted nature of inequality, Wilde says we must approach it with a wider lens that looks at multiple social identities rather than simply studying them independently of one another. This is most apparent when sociologists control for race rather than analyzing it as a primary social characteristic in the model.

We rarely discuss religion as a stratifying effect that compounds inequalities for those who are already socially marginalized in other ways, such as race. While scholarship has been done to analyze religion as a stratifying agent (Keister and Sherkat 2014), research must include how multiple forms of stratification that occur simultaneously shape American life (Wilde 2018). While scholars have shown the ways that religion exists alongside race in forming inequality between racial groups (Wilde 2016, 2017, 2018), little is known about the ways that religion itself works as a stratifying agent within racial groups, creating religion-based economic differences between people of the same race. This paper addresses this issue by conceptualizing religion as a tool that creates inequality within racial groups. We contend that religious affiliation further stratifies racialized status attainment in the United States. We hypothesize that social capital varies considerably for Christian racial minorities in the US, and that these variations are linked with variations in occupational prestige within religious populations. This is most pronounced in the example of Black Christians where occupational prestige is highest for those in predominantly white denominations compared to those involved in predominantly Black denominations. For Black respondents we also find that religious affiliation remains a significant source of social capital as noted by the lower occupational prestige of unaffiliated Black Americans. We engage with the multiracial congregations literature by reviewing the impact of multiracial churches on Black American occupational prestige and what implications this might have for congregational life. We draw from the insights in immigration and racial stratification literatures to frame our argument and provide implications for the study of racialized status attainment in sociology of religion.

Black Americans and Status Attainment

After the Civil Rights Movement, sociological research on race and status attainment largely attributed racial disparities to class inequality rather than the structural impacts of racism (Wilson 1980; Moore 1987; Thomas 1993; Thomas, Herring, and Horton 1994). However, this lens assumes that class inequality functions the same way regardless of race—several studies show that for Black people with high levels of occupational attainment, the pathways to that attainment are still different from whites (Roscigno and Ainsworth-Darnell 1999; Wilson et al. 1999).

While research on Black occupational mobility waned, research on immigrant occupational attainment grew from the late 1980s onward. Two key insights emerged from this literature. First, different racial groups have different ways of developing the networks necessary to establish careers and build communities, and being American-born versus an immigrant shapes these pathways (Lin 1999; Portes and Jensen 1987). Second, like immigrant groups, Black Americans benefit from racially diverse social networks in their status achievement (Moore 1987; Blau 1991). Being connected with those who have different kinds of capital and ties to other kinds of jobs can expand the tools in one’s cultural toolkit, making it possible to develop new skills and pursue new kinds of work (Portes and Jensen 1989; Swidler 1986).

However, both immigrant and native minority groups in America are structurally excluded from a major asset in American society: white social capital. All communities have their own valuable forms of social capital and develop relationships, resources, and networks that have cultural knowledge and skills that are a net benefit to the members of those networks (Yosso 2005). However, because white Americans hold and hoard economic and occupational power in American society, relational proximity to whites specifically gives minoritized Americans more capital than simply developing networks with other non-whites.

Living in a society structured and upheld by a white supremacist racial hierarchy puts Black Americans perpetually at risk of losing what social capital they have. Despite achieving comparable educational attainment levels with whites, downward mobility is common for middle-class Black Americans and job security can be tenuous (Chetty et al. 2018). For middle-class Black Americans, maintaining that status is far more perilous than whites and can easily be lost. The Great Recession of 2008 hit middle-class Black Americans much harder than whites due to fewer assets and more fragile job status, pushing many out of middle-class status (Patillo 2013). While the unemployment rate for white Americans in 2010 remained at 8%, Black American unemployment rates shot up to 16%, the highest of any racial group since the recession of 1982 (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2011). In 1982, Black unemployment reached over 20%. In 2010, Black men in managerial and professional positions made $300 less on average per week than their white counterparts in the same fields (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2011).

Networks involving whites confer more capital. While there are many types of capital, we specifically refer to Lin’s (2000) treatment of social capital as tools and resources obtained through interpersonal relationships. On average, about 35% of a Black person’s network is non-Black people (PRRI 2013). Black Americans’ networks are less diverse than Latinx Americans (54% non-Hispanic), but more diverse than white Americans (9% non-white).

Many Black middle-class Americans work in predominantly white businesses while living in predominantly Black informal networks. Black middle-class Americans experience the tension of being perceived as too focused on economic mobility to care about the Black community, a critique they receive from working-class and poor Black people who claim they will never “sell out” (Frazier 1957). DuBois describes this tension for the Black middle class as “double consciousness” (DuBois 1903). While Black middle-class Americans are aware of the ways in which their standing in society is tenuous and requires active maintenance (Pattillo 2013), they have the ties to negotiate in the workplace while depending on their Black communities for emotional care and support (Taylor and Chatters 1988).

Latinxs and Status Attainment

Practicing a theoretically intersectional approach requires in-depth analysis into how inequalities affect social identities differently. While Latinx is defined by the U.S. Census as an ethnicity under which different racial groups can be categorized (meaning that Latinx-Americans can also be white or Black or multiracial), ethnicities such as Mexican American have been historically racialized in the United States and have experienced systematic discrimination and disenfranchisement (Massey 2009). Because of the ways Latinx peoples have been systematically disadvantaged at the institutional and interpersonal levels, we will be addressing Latinx-Americans as a racialized group in this article.

Latinx Americans experience occupational inequality in uniquely different ways from Black Americans. Immigration status and country of origin play significant roles in stratifying occupational attainment outcomes for Latinx Americans (Bohon 2005). Within Latinx immigrant groups, occupational attainment outcomes vary broadly. This is likely because this is a very heterogenous group that is frequently lumped together to broadly generalize about immigrants who vary considerably on factors related to stratification including human, financial and educational capital. In this way, Latinxs as a group appear more like Asian-Americans than Black Americans (Portes and Zhou 1992). However, because Latinxs are a structural racial group in the United States, understanding how occupational attainment affects Latinxs Americans is important for a comprehensive analysis of race and religion in the United States.

When immigrants come to the United States, they often settle intentionally in areas that are close to their country of origin or where many members of their country of origin are. These immigrants can create “enclaves,” or geographically-locked networks in which to share tools, resources, and connections (Portes and Jensen 1987, 1989). Portes found that these enclaves reduce obstacles to employment in the short-term—like finding a friend a job at a restaurant—but is usually unsuccessful in reducing barriers to occupational mobility and developing social capital assets (Lin 2000). Lin describes this as “homogeneity of resources.” Because capital requires existing capital in order to replicate (Bourdieu 1986), lacking access to economic power creates difficulty in developing more economic capital.

Latinx occupational and economic outcomes tend to be situated between Black and white outcomes. When Black Americans unemployment rates rose from 2007-2010 during the Great Recession, Latinx-American unemployment rates more than doubled from 5.6% to 12.5% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011). However, even with the dramatic increase, Latinx unemployment rates remained lower than Black Americans (16%). Latinxs also have more racially diverse networks than Black Americans, with non-Latinx relationships making up 54% of their networks compared to 35% for Black people surveyed (PRRI 2013).

Latinx Americans experienced discrimination in immigration and hiring processes in the twentieth century, and still do today (Massey 2009). However, the history of enslavement of African-Americans and the anti-Black sentiment baked into the historical foundation of the United States’ economic structure is essential to understanding the role of racial capital in occupational prestige. This also reflects the position Latinx Americans hold in society as being lighter-skinned than most Black Americans and therefore holding more skin color-based capital in American society (Bonilla-Silva 2003). Bonilla-Silva argues that the advantages of being white will be passed down through the racial hierarchy in limited amounts, with Black Americans at the bottom and Latinx Americans somewhere in the middle. By incorporating Bonilla-Silva’s hypothesis, we expect that occupational outcomes for Latinx Americans will vary broadly but fit generally between the outcomes of white and Black Americans.

Complex Religion

While stratification is most frequently discussed in relationship with race and gender identities, religion is also a social identity that can affect status attainment. Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) argued for theoretical analysis that understands the complexities of the social experience and how identities interact with one another to create unique outcomes. According to Crenshaw, the intersections of our social identities create a unique “position” within society that affects our outcomes. Race is a prominent status marker that holds great influence over attainment outcomes. The ways racial identities affect those outcomes were explained above. However, religious affiliation is also a social identity that plays an important role in both developing networks and defining one’s position in society.

Melissa Wilde picks up on this framing with her work on complex religion (2016, 2017, 2018), which argues that religion’s effect on attitudinal and behavioral outcomes must intersect with other facets of an individual’s and a group’s social location. Wilde uses complex religion to analyze and predict political affiliation (2016) and educational attainment (2018). She finds that Conservative Protestants are no longer merely politically “conservative,” but white Conservative Protestants remain conservative. When race is taken into account to differentiate between affiliations and their political leanings, race is clearly important as well as religion. Her main argument is that religion is deeply interconnected with race, class, and ethnicity, and therefore should be specifically studied in relationship with these structures. Her theoretical argument for complex religion (2017) ends with a call for robust work that incorporates the complexity and often contradictory nature of religion’s outcomes in society.

Religion in White Communities

Religion matters when understanding variation in status attainment (Demerath 1965; Lenski 1961; Niebuhr 1929; Pope 1942; Sherkat 2012; Smith and Faris 2005; Weber 1906). Sherkat (2012) and Keister (2011) found that occupational attainment and wealth attainment are significantly stratified by religious affiliation, with Jewish and Protestant Mainline Americans toward the top and Evangelicals toward the bottom of the economic ladder. However, understanding intra-racial religious affiliation effects on occupational attainment has not yet been studied in depth.

The religious traditions with the highest status attainment outcomes have remained somewhat consistent historically. Mainline Protestant Americans (a Christian religious tradition that is more predominantly white than Evangelical Protestantism) remain among the most educated and exhibit the highest levels of occupational prestige since the early twentieth century (Davidson and Pyle 2011; Smith and Faris 2005). Catholic Americans were greatly stigmatized in the 19th and 20th centuries and were mostly working class, but on average white Catholics have high educational and occupational mobility and reside in the middle class today (Greeley 1994; Keister 2007; Roof and McKinney 1987). Catholic Americans—including European Catholics—were racialized as non-white until midway through the 20^th century. The destigmatization of Catholicism through a Catholic U.S. president and the ever-shifting definition of those considered “white” (Warren and Twine 1997) shifted attitudes towards Catholics, changing their racialized status.

Evangelical (or Conservative Protestant) Christianity as we know it today is considered the predominantly white Protestant tradition with the lowest average educational attainment and occupational prestige, only above Black Protestants (Park and Reimer 2002). Sherkat (2012) argued that Conservative Protestant occupational prestige is lower on average due to the proscription of women’s educational attainment in many of those religious communities. Because of the lack of access to religious networks and loose ties, we expect that all respondents who are unaffiliated will have lower levels of occupational prestige than their religious counterparts.

Religion stratification literature also notes that Black Protestants who originally formed separate congregations and denominations as a result of exclusion from white Mainline and Evangelical communities have consistently lower rates of educational attainment, lower occupational prestige and income than predominantly white Christian traditions (Park and Reimer 2002; Smith and Faris 2005). Scholars of religion conclude that the socioeconomic inequality of religious groups in the twentieth century has the stability to continue reproducing itself in the years to come (Smith and Faris 2005). With this in mind, we expect to see this order of stratification in the following analyses.

Religion in Black Communities

Missing from the religious stratification research are explanations of how economic resources are stratified within racial groups. Economic resources and class capital vary broadly within racial groups, including Black Americans. What role, then, does religion play in how class is stratified among Black Americans?

Consider for example, the diversity within Black Protestantism. 60% of Black Americans say they attend a predominantly Black congregation, 13% attend a predominantly white/other congregation, and 25% attend a multiracial congregation (Pew Research 2021). 66% of Black Americans are Protestant and only 6% are Catholic (Pew Research 2021). According to Shelton and Emerson (2012), about 60% of Black Protestant congregations are Baptist denominations, 7% Methodist, and 12% Pentecostal. The racial homogeneity of Black congregations is largely due to the historic racism experienced by Black Christians as they developed their own congregational structures, but this persists today in part because of what Ellison and Sherkat call the “semi-involuntary institution” of Black churches, particularly in the South (Ellison and Sherkat 1995). Also, many older Black adults prefer a predominantly Black congregation with a Black clergy leader and elders. However, young Black Americans (Gen Z and Millennials) attend white and multiracial churches more frequently than their elders (Pew Research 2021).

Predominantly Black churches have historically played a crucial role in developing financial and emotional support in Black communities. Ellison and Sherkat argue that church attendance in Black communities has acted as a gateway for legitimacy and social opportunity. Simply put, church involvement in Black communities leads to the development of social capital within those communities (Ellison and Sherkat 1995). Because of the “semi-voluntary” nature of religious life in Black communities, we expect that unaffiliated Black Americans will have the lowest level of occupational prestige, having no loose ties through religious networks at all.

However, as Eddie Glaude notes in his Op-Ed, “The Black Church is Dead,” the idea of the semi-involuntary institution is changing and evolving as conservative Black pastors lose their credibility and more Black young adults move to megachurches or leave religion altogether (Glaude 2012; Pew Research 2021). We theorize that predominantly Black denominations function as Black enclaves, pooling resources in order to gain access to opportunities for status attainment. For Black middle-class Americans who do not need this forms of access as greatly as working-class Black Americans, they may self-select into other whiter congregations based on class similarities rather than racial similarities (Pitt 2010).

Religion in Latinx Communities

While Black Christians have been extensively researched to understand their religious behavior (see Ellison and Sherkat 1995), Latinx Christians in the United States are a relatively new group for analysis, and particularly challenging to analyze at a macro level. This is primarily because current social science quantitative methods of analysis are not well-equipped to discern the complexities of the racial and ethnic heterogeneity of Latinx groups.

Historically, first generation Latinx immigrants have mostly been Catholic (Pew Research 2016). A large part of this has to do with the religious compositions of many Latinx-Americans’ countries of origin. The last several decades have seen a major change in religious composition in the global South, including Central and South America. Countries that were historically Catholic have seen large-scale religious conversions to Protestant identities, specifically Pentecostal (Gill 1998; Koehrsen 2018). This has led to an increase in Latinx Protestant immigrants to the United States (Mulder, Ramos, and Martí 2017). These global changes are difficult to identify in the North American affiliation groupings in quantitative social science research due to the geographically constructed nature of religious affiliation (Hackett et al. 2014). According to data from Pew Research’s 2013 National Survey of Latinos and Religion, 60% of immigrant Latinx respondents are Catholic. However, between the U.S. assimilation process and Protestant marketing to Catholic immigrant audiences, many originally Latinx Catholic immigrants convert to Protestantism themselves or have children and grandchildren who identify as Evangelical Protestant (Pew Research 2016). As a result, U.S.-born Latinx respondents are only 48% Catholic (Pew Research 2013).

Catholic parishes with predominantly Latinx congregations frequently hold services in Spanish and provide opportunities to connect with cultural traditions from some immigrants’ countries of origin (Calvillo and Bailey 2015). Calvillo and Bailey describe this as an “ethnic church”: a religious community that merges religious and ethnic identities to create a sense of cultural identity that is deeply entwined in both. According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, an estimated 26% of all Catholic parishes in the U.S. explicitly serve Latinx Catholic communities, and 24% hold Mass in Spanish at least once a month (CARA 2013). Protestant churches have adopted Central and South American religious iconography in many churches as a tactic to draw Latinx immigrants to their churches (Mulder, Ramos, and Martí 2017).

While first-generation Latinx immigrants often identify as Catholic, many 1.5 and second generation Latinx-Americans have converted to Evangelical or Conservative Protestantism, and young Latinx adults have seen a significant shift among their numbers to unaffiliated status (Pew Research 2016). While some scholars argue that assimilation involves movement into predominantly white religious networks (Hunt 2000; Calvillo and Bailey 2015), others argue that this interpretation of assimilation is far too simplistic (Alba and Nee 2003; Freier 2008). Because of this, we hypothesize that unaffiliated Latinx Americans will not significantly decrease in occupational prestige compared to affiliated Latinx Americans.

Phenotypical proximity to whiteness among non-Black, non-Indigenous Latinxs provides gains in social capital that Black Americans cannot receive. We concur with Bonilla-Silva (2003) that the social advantages of closer racial identification with whiteness as honorary whites, particularly for second generation non-Black Latinx Americans. Additionally, being white-passing increases the likelihood of having white people in their networks outside of churches and be able to reap network benefits outside of church settings. Because Latinx and Black respondents have historically been treated in the literature as racially distinct and therefore have significantly different outcomes, we believe that incorporating Latinx respondents into our analysis contributes to the existing scholarship on religious stratification for Latinx Americans.

Network Theory and Social Capital

Capital operates on a structure of reproduction: The more capital a group has, the more capital it can produce (Bourdieu 1986). Reproductive structures perpetuate capital inequality when racial biases inform the acquisition and transmission of capital. Of specific importance to this study is the replication of racial inequalities in social capital.

Social capital matters for understanding status attainment because status attainment is greatly influenced by the amount of social capital a person possesses (Cross and Lin 2010). Social capital is defined by Lin (2001, 786) as “investment and use of embedded resources in social relations for expected returns.” Social capital returns typically take the form of information—job opportunities, market deals, or learning new skills. Networks are the webs of relationships in societies through which information and resources are passed (Lin 2001). As the adage goes: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Networks are essential for understanding the transference of social capital.

Social capital transmitted through networks has significant effects on status attainment outcomes (Cross and Lin 2010). Lin (1999, 467) describes status attainment as “a process by which individuals mobilize and invest in resources for returns in socioeconomic standings.” Blau and Duncan (1967) defined status attainment in the way sociology typically uses it today—an outcome most often created by educational or previous occupational status.

However, previous occupation and educational statuses are stratified and unequal in outcomes, particularly by race and class (Lin 2000). By extension, social networks that carry status-altering potential are unequally distributed by race. For networks with power and resources, Lin argues that close ties, rather than weak ones, make it easier to preserve resources for those at the “top” of the hierarchy (Lin 1999). Well-resourced communities with high status attainment tend to be disproportionately white, which makes network dependence racialized (McDonald 2011).

Vulnerable communities—those who frequently experience economic insecurity—rely more heavily on ties established between friends and acquaintances. These ties would be fairly weak and less necessary in economically stable communities with lots of social capital (Granovetter 1973; Ericksen and Yancey 1977). Those who lack the access others have rely upon “cooperative support”—mutually beneficial relationship that help both parties get closer to accessing what they need (Ericksen and Yancey 1977).

How do non-white networks differ in social capital allocation, distribution, and effect? Most social networks contain a “network hub,” or a central structure that other network relationships branch out of (Borgatti and Halgin 2011). In Black communities, the Black church has historically served as a network hub, providing opportunities to establish weak ties and cooperative support between Black individuals (Chatters et al. 2002). Similarly, in Latinx immigrant communities, Catholic churches offer the opportunity to connect locally with other immigrants, frequently Spanish-speaking, and offer job opportunities for those who may struggle with their English or simply lack connections to employment (Calvillo and Bailey 2015). Black communities develop their church communities as “enclaves” of their own that they use to distribute resources within their communities.

In order to benefit from these religious communal networks, attendance is required to establish meaningful bonds (Hackett 2008). When attendance is high, those networks can develop strength and resilience when dependence on those connections becomes necessary for capital maintenance in low-resourced communities. Because of this, we anticipate that attendance will be theoretically and statistically meaningful in our analyses.

While Black and Latinx networks behave similarly as enclaves, the connections they are able to develop outside their enclaves are racialized. Bonilla-Silva (2003) argues that the closer a person’s social and phenotypical proximity to whiteness, the more privilege they have as a white-passing person in society. Many Latinx-Americans “pass” as white, potentially gaining social capital for their racial identification in the American racial structure in ways that Black people cannot (Bonilla-Silva, 2003). Because of the capital that English fluency and citizenship bring in the United States, the transition from immigrant to citizen between first and second generation Latinxs allows for dramatic gains in social capital in American society (Portes and Zhou 1992). Applying this to networks, the closer the proximity to white communities, the less need there is for weak ties and cooperative support from within an ethnic immigrant enclave. Because of this, we expect to find that U.S. citizenship will moderate the effect of religion on occupational prestige for Latinx Americans.

According to Bonilla-Silva, Black communities will have the least capital outside of their racial group, have the least amount of overlap with white communities, and be the least likely to “pass” as white in society. This makes the durability of weak ties even more important and the replication of weak ties among Black communities crucial for survival. In Black communities, solidarity with other Black community members is valued as an essential part of being a good friend, neighbor, congregant, and citizen (Chatters et al. 2002). Some scholars have hypothesized that the Black church exists as a “semi-involuntary institution” in Black communities, particularly in the rural south, concluding that social norms and expectations demand that Black southerners participate in their local Black congregations (Ellison and Sherkat 1995).

Because of the previous, we hypothesize the following:

H1: White respondents in Evangelical-affiliated churches will exhibit lower occupational prestige relative to whites in Mainline churches.

H2a: Black respondents who affiliate with predominantly white churches and denominations will have significantly higher levels of occupational prestige than those who are affiliated with predominantly Black churches.

H2b: Unaffiliated Black respondents will exhibit lower occupational prestige than Black respondents in Black Protestant traditions.

H3a: Latinx respondents in Catholic churches will exhibit lower occupational prestige than Latinxs in Protestant churches.

H3b: Unaffiliated Latinx respondents will exhibit lower occupational prestige than Latinxs in Catholic churches.

H4: Those who attend church more frequently will exhibit higher occupational prestige than those who do not.

H5: Attendance will be more important for religious traditions with less occupational prestige.

Data

Data for our study come from the General Social Survey (GSS). The GSS is a biennial, nationally representative survey of Americans, conducted using in-person interviews. Response rates are typically 70% (General Social Survey 2016). For the purposes of this article, we pooled all 2000-2016 responses from the cross-sectional waves of the GSS in order to have a larger dataset to analyze racial subgroups, making a total of 18,021 respondents. This study examines a national-level effect of stratified outcomes for racial groups based on religious affiliation; because of this, we chose a sample that was nationally representative and large enough to have sufficient sample sizes for each racial category. The GSS is large, asks consistent questions through each wave of the survey, and is nationally representative.

Methods and Variables

We use occupational prestige as the dependent variable. For the purposes of measuring status attainment in occupational hierarchies, we determined that the occupational prestige variable in the GSS is the closest proxy to status attainment in a work environment (Lin 2000). While occupational prestige is closely tied with annual income and educational attainment, they are not correlated closely enough to be interchangeable (Hout et al. 2014) and fail to get at the hypothesis as directly as the prestige measurement.

The GSS measure for occupational prestige has been used since 1989 and is created by asking a sample of respondents not surveyed in the main GSS survey to rank the “social standing” of 90 different occupations on a scale of 1–9, with 9 being the highest standing. These rankings are then averaged to create a score for that occupation, and then transformed so the ratings range from 0 to 100, with 0 being no prestige and 100 being extremely high levels of prestige (see Nakao and Treas 1994; Smith and Son 2014). Retired respondents were rated according to the prestige of their previous occupation before retiring.

The race variable in the GSS is coded based on the RACECEN1, RACECEN2, and RACECEN3 variables. Respondents were asked three times about their racial/ethnic identification. Those who responded “Hispanic” at any point were coded as Latinx; non-Hispanic respondents were then coded based on a single-race selection from the sum of the RACECEN variables. The groups are coded as: White non-Latinx, Black non-Latinx, Latinx, and Asian non-Latinx. We transition from using “Hispanic” for our racial variable because Hispanic is not a race, but a language marker (i.e., immigrants from Spain are Hispanic, but not Latinx). Any respondents who selected more than one racial group, but not Hispanic, were coded as non-Latinx multiracial.¹

The Latinx sample is smaller than the current national average of 18.1% of the U.S. population (see Table 3.1) (U.S. Census 2018). This is likely because the GSS did not incorporate a Spanish interview component until 2006. Because of the need for larger subsample sizes we chose to incorporate GSS data going back to 2000. The English-only surveys restrict the sample of Latinxs to only proficient English speakers, who only make up 68% of the Latinx-American population (Krogstad et al. 2015). This will significantly alter occupational prestige outcomes, as language proficiency is an important factor in developing social and cultural capital.

The main religion variable is religious affiliation, created using the RELTRAD scheme. Religious denominations are coded into groups: Evangelical Protestant (sometimes also referred to as Conservative Protestant), Mainline Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Other Religion, and Unaffiliated. Evangelical Protestants consist of those in traditionally “Evangelical” denominations (such as Southern Baptists) and those with high church attendance but selected no denomination (a non-denominational megachurch, for example). According to the RELTRAD structure, Black Protestants are specifically those who are in seven historically Black traditions, but Black respondents exist in other religious traditions as well, including Evangelical Protestant traditions such as Southern Baptists (Steensland et al. 2000). Evangelical Protestants who are Black make up 15.5% of our entire Black subsample (N = 444).

There is no specific way in the GSS to know whether a congregation is predominantly white: however, because Black Protestants are given their own category in RELTRAD, and most Black Christians attend predominantly Black churches (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990; Pew Research 2021), and most white Christians attend predominantly white churches (Jones 2016), we can assume that Black Protestant traditions are more predominantly Black than Evangelical denominations. Respondents in the Black Protestant RELTRAD category are 55% of our Black subsample (N = 1578).

Religious networks are not merely about affiliation, but involvement. Because of this, the second independent variable for this analysis is attendance. Respondents were asked “How often does respondent attend religious services?” The response is a 9-category variable ranging from “never” to “more than once a week,” with 0 being never and 9 being more than once a week. We treat this variable as continuous in our models.

Sex is coded 1 for male and 2 for female. Age is continuous and corresponds with the respondent’s age, top-coded at 89. Education is a continuous variable ranging from 0 years of school (no formal education) to 20 years (graduate school or higher). Employment status is coded into 8 categories: employed full-time, employed part-time, temporarily not working, unemployed, retired, in school, keeping house, and other. Region is coded into 4 categories: Northeast, Midwest, South, and West. Finally, because we know that immigration status affects occupational outcomes, especially for groups with high immigration levels, we controlled for whether the respondent was born in the United States.

The entire sample is 18,021 cases out of 24,350. 6,329 cases are excluded due to missing values on key dependent and independent variables. The values appear to be missing at random and therefore create no apparent issues with the analysis. Because all cases with missing values related to our analysis were removed, multiple imputation was not used. All analyses use the GSS personal weighting variable.

Table 1 reports demographic breakdowns of the full sample and its subcategories: White respondents, Black respondents, and Latinx/Hispanic respondents. Table 1 also shows the religious and occupational status of each racial subgroup along with the total sample. The top of the table shows that the mean occupational prestige scores are lower for Black and Latinx respondents than for white respondents. Black and Latinx respondents also have smaller standard deviations, indicating that the occupational prestige levels vary slightly less for racial minority groups than for whites. The sample has fewer Latinx respondents than the overall U.S. population, but the sample percentage of Black respondents is approximately the same as the U.S. national average. Whites are oversampled by about 10%. Black Protestants make up about 55% of the Black subsample, which is consistent with a plurality of Black respondents living in the South Atlantic region (Ellison and Sherkat 1995).

Table 1.

Summary Statistics.

Variable	Mean (%) of overall (SD)	Mean (%) of Whites (SD)	Mean (%) of Blacks (SD)	Mean (%) of Latinxs (SD)	Min	Max
Occupational prestige score	43.840 (13.249)	45.037 (13.249)	40.269 (12.264)	39.509 (12.065)	16	80
Race
White non-Hispanic	71.17
Black non-Hispanic	14.06
Hispanic	10.90
Other race non-Hispanic	3.87
Religious tradition
Evangelical	25.38	29.27	15.40	15.83
Mainline	15.30	19.92	4.50	1.98
Black Protestant	7.79	–	55.19	–
Catholic	25.08	23.29	6.12	62.34
Jewish	1.84	2.45	0.43	0.20
Other religion	6.07	5.47	4.90	3.46
Nonaffiliated	18.55	19.61	13.46	16.18
Church attendance^a	3.572 (2.774)	3.398 (2.789)	4.486 (2.601)	3.617 (2.675)	0	9
Education	13.661 (2.993)	13.989 (2.799)	13.039 (2.656)	11.957 (3.674)	0	20
Sex
Male	46.21	47.17	38.93	48.30
Female	53.79	52.83	61.07	51.70
Age	47.285 (16.795)	49.182 (17.077)	44.443 (15.329)	40.115 (14.252)	18	89
Employment status
Work full-time	53.30	52.01	53.97	59.90
Work part-time	11.30	11.02	10.42	13.23
Temp. not working	2.24	2.29	2.49	1.83
Unemployed	4.00	3.23	6.59	5.39
Retired	15.94	18.70	11.25	6.31
In school	2.16	1.96	2.45	2.60
Keeping house	8.67	8.40	9.95	8.96
Other	2.39	2.39	2.88	1.78
Region
Northeast	17.23	18.19	14.33	14.20
Midwest	24.24	28.08	17.05	10.59
South	37.16	33.55	60.64	35.83
West	21.37	20.19	7.97	39.39
Citizenship
Born in U.S.	88.44	95.68	92.14	52.52
Not born in U.S.	11.56	4.32	7.86	47.48
N	18,021	12,826	2,533	1,965

^aChurch attendance ranges from 0-9, with 0 = never attend church and 9 = attend more than once a week.

The mean age across racial subgroups varies by nearly 10 years between white and Latinx respondents, with Black respondents in between. This likely explains why Latinxs are the racial subgroup with the most full-time employment. Black and Latinx respondents have higher rates of unemployment as well, with Black respondents having double the rates of unemployment for whites. The retired population of white respondents is also much larger than retired Black or Latinx respondents. Nearly half of the Latinx subsample was born outside the United States.

Analysis

For the analysis, we ran four different kinds of models: a 5-model full sample OLS regression, and then 4-model white-only, Black-only, and Latinx-only respondent regressions. We chose not to include the full sample regressions here because they do not directly answer the hypotheses about the nature of religious stratification within racial groups.² For each subsample, we begin the models with RELTRAD only. In Model 2 we incorporate attendance, in Model 3 we add the controls, and in Model 4 we include an interaction effect between religious affiliation and attendance to assess whether the effect of attendance within each religious affiliation changes the correlation to occupational prestige. This pattern remains consistent across all three tables.

In our summary statistics, we see that the average occupational prestige for each racial group is notably different: while the average occupational prestige score for whites is 45.037 (approximately the score of a loan officer), the average occupational prestige score for Black respondents is only 40.269 (a billing clerk), and for Latinx respondents only 39.509 (a brickmason or carpenter) (Hout et al. 2014).

Results

White Mainline respondents remain statistically significant across all four models shown in Table 2 (b = 1.541).³ This is in line with previous research that indicates Mainline Protestants have higher levels of occupational prestige than Evangelical/Conservative Protestants (Keister 2011; Pyle 2006; Sherkat 2012).⁴ The effect of being Jewish also remains significant across all four models, remaining consistent with the wealth and religion literature (Keister 2011).

Table 2.

OLS Coefficients for Occupational Prestige Scores for White Respondents.

Predictors	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4
Religion (evangelical as control)
Mainline	3.565*** (0.363)	4.350*** (0.362)	0.772* (0.327)	1.541** (0.574)
Catholic	1.950*** (0.353)	2.610*** (0.349)	0.304 (0.327)	0.558 (0.592)
Jewish	8.299***(0.883)	9.747*** (0.900)	2.317** (0.793)	2.709* (1.262)
Other	2.313*** (0.632)	2.896*** (0.633)	0.311 (0.565)	1.581† (0.944)
Nonaffiliated	1.078** (0.372)	3.776*** (0.419)	0.524 (0.380)	0.667 (0.486)
Church attendance		0.674*** (0.053)	0.251*** (0.048)	0.319*** (0.072)
RelTrad x attendance
Mainline x attendance				−0.191 (0.119)
Catholic x attendance				−0.048 (0.120)
Jewish x attendance				−0.091 (0.379)
Other x attendance				−0.309 (0.188)
Nonaffiliated x attendance				0.181 (0.221)
Education			2.314*** (0.047)	2.314*** (0.047)
Sex (male as control)
Female			−0.024 (0.235)	−0.024 (0.235)
Age			0.081*** (0.009)	0.081*** (0.009)
Employment status (employed fulltime is control)
Work part-time			−3.845*** (0.399)	−3.835*** (0.399)
Temp. not working			0.812 (0.649)	0.807 (0.650)
Unemployed			−2.402*** (0.560)	−2.361***(0.562)
Retired			0.400 (0.385)	0.421 (0.385)
In school			−3.731*** (0.970)	−3.764*** (0.965)
Keeping house			−1.972*** (0.406)	−1.960*** (0.406)
Other			−1.189 (0.821)	−1.177 (0.821)
Region (Northeast is control) Midwes			−0.603† (0.351)	−0.600† (0.351)
South			0.209 (0.348)	0.225 (0.348)
West			−0.202 (0.377)	−0.199 (0.377)
Not born in U.S.			0.576 (0.636)	0.557 (0.637)
R ²	0.015	0.030	0.273	0.275
Constant	43.319*** (0.223)	40.111*** (0.320)	8.318*** (0.868)	7.982*** (0.637)
N	12,826	12,826	12,826	12,826

Standard errors in parentheses.

†p < .1, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

All reported stats are weighted using the GSS weighting variable.

A recurring theme throughout the regression analyses will be the significant relationship between educational attainment and occupational prestige. While education only correlates with the respondent’s annual income by 0.261, the correlation between education and occupational prestige is 0.488, almost double. (The correlation value between respondent’s income and occupational prestige is similar to the one with education at 0.276.) This shows in Model 3 when education is brought into the model and the effect of religion, especially for those affiliated with Mainline traditions, decreases but remains statistically significant.

Attendance remains very significant through the models, indicating that attendance is positively affiliated (p < .001) with an increase in occupational prestige for the white subsample. The interaction effects for Mainline when attendance equals zero and attendance among Evangelicals are significant, indicating that attendance is associated with occupational prestige for Evangelicals (b = 0.319), and the effect of being Mainline on occupational prestige is significantly higher (p < .01) than Evangelical among those who never attend church (b = 1.541). Age and employment status also remain significant. Living in the Midwest was a marginally negative effect on occupational prestige, which remains consistent with literature about class for whites in America.

Table 3 reports the occupational prestige outcomes for the subsample of Black respondents. Black Evangelicals maintain significantly higher (p < .05) levels of occupational prestige (b = 1.595) than Black Protestants throughout the first three models until the interaction is included. This effect is larger than the effect of living in the South (b = −1.499). Church attendance remains significant across the three models, indicating that the level of involvement in church has a positively significant correlation with occupational prestige (b = 0.223). For the Black respondents in this data, more frequent church attendance is associated with higher levels of occupational prestige.

Table 3.

OLS Coefficients for Occupational Prestige Scores for Black Respondents.

Predictors	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4
Religious tradition (black protestants as control)
Evangelical	3.415*** (0.798)	2.755** (0.808)	1.595* (0.738)	1.893 (1.953)
Mainline	3.371** (1.295)	3.592** (1.279)	1.273 (1.169)	1.164 (2.292)
Catholic	0.016 (1.110)	0.285 (1.112)	−0.379 (0.935)	1.647 (1.858)
Other	0.538 (1.196)	0.631 (1.186)	0.763 (1.067)	1.412 (2.282)
Nonaffiliated	−0.644 (0.411)	0.873 (0.865)	0.741 (0.752)	2.156* (1.062)
Church attendance		0.486*** (0.112)	0.223* (0.104)	0.346* (0.135)
RelTrad x attendance
Evangelical x attendance				−0.076 (0.326)
Mainline x attendance				0.039 (0.458)
Catholic x attendance				−0.463 (0.416)
Other x attendance				−0.139 (0.388)
Nonaffiliated x attendance				−0.626* (0.309)
Education			1.884*** (0.110)	1.878*** (0.111)
Sex (male as control)
Female			1.766*** (0.484)	1.755*** (0.485)
Age			0.116*** (0.019)	0.115*** (0.018)
Employment status (employed fulltime is control)
Work part-time			−3.201*** (0.767)	−3.196***(0.766)
Temp. not working			0.613 (1.538)	0.552 (1.541)
Unemployed			−1.735 (1.063)	−1.751† (1.058)
Retired			−2.952** (0.973)	−2.973** (0.976)
In school			−1.070 (1.423)	−1.086 (1.413)
Keeping house			−3.129*** (0.795)	−3.093*** (0.798)
Other			−2.932* (1.408)	−2.755* (1.395)
Region (Northeast is control)
Midwest			−0.692 (0.873)	−0.621 (0.873)
South			−1.499* (0.728)	−1.467* (0.731)
West			−0.164 (1.067)	−0.123 (1.065)
Not born in U.S.			1.386 (1.065)	1.433 (1.070)
R ²	0.015	0.023	0.230	0.232
Constant	39.428*** (0.348)	37.097*** (0.619)	8.302*** (1.927)	7.812*** (1.966)
N	2,533	2,533	2,533	2,533

Standard errors in parentheses.

†p < .1, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

All reported stats are weighted using the GSS weighting variable.

The interaction between religious affiliation and attendance creates an interesting effect for the nonaffiliated group. The interaction tells us that being nonaffiliated is correlated with higher occupational prestige scores (b = 2.156) compared to being Black Protestant when attendance = never. However, the effect of being nonaffiliated on occupational prestige decreases (b = −0.626) for every unit increase in church attendance, until it eventually becomes a negative correlation. For the rest of the categories there is no significant interaction, meaning that the effect of attendance is the same across all religious affiliations.

Gender also remains highly significant (p < .001), which is different from the other two racial subsamples. Black women have significantly higher levels of occupational prestige than Black men, which may be related to many Black men having criminal records and being perceived as a potential hiring risk. Education and age also remain highly significant. Also differing from the other subsamples, being unemployed or in school are not significantly different in outcome from being employed fulltime. This might be because many students work while also being in school. The years of this sample also cover the Great Recession of 2008, which disproportionately impacted Black middle-class employment because Black Americans are disproportionately employed in the public sector (Pitts 2011). Living in the South is also negatively correlated with occupational prestige scores for Black respondents.

Table 4 reports the occupational prestige outcomes for the Latinx subsample. The Latinx subsample is the least impacted by religious factors for occupational prestige. This hearkens back to the observation in the literature that religious participation is about Latinx culture and identity (Calvillo and Bailey 2015). Latinx Catholics and Protestants appear to have little significant difference from one another in occupational prestige outcomes. The only significant determinants are education, age, and employment status.

Table 4.

OLS Coefficients for Occupational Prestige Scores for Latinx Respondents.

Predictors	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4
Religious tradition (catholics as control)
Evangelical	0.026 (0.806)	−0.144 (0.836)	−0.011 (0.769)	0.538 (1.675)
Mainline	2.940 (1.822)	2.915 (1.829)	0.741 (1.583)	2.612 (2.895)
Other	1.627 (1.922)	1.528 (1.923)	1.623 (1.619)	4.260* (2.150)
Nonaffiliated	1.439† (0.838)	1.672† (0.875)	0.690 (0.769)	1.237 (0.996)
Church attendance		0.091 (0.119)	0.162 (0.110)	0.249† (0.139)
RelTrad x attendance
Evangelical x attendance				−0.127 (0.294)
Mainline x attendance				−0.475 (0.668)
Other x attendance				−0.573 (0.460)
Nonaffiliated x attendance				−0.280 (0.329)
Education			1.298*** (0.085)	1.291*** (0.085)
Sex (male as control)
Female			0.314 (0.569)	0.322 (0.570)
Age			0.089*** (0.023)	0.089*** (0.023)
Employment status (employed fulltime is control)
Work part-time			−4.563*** (0.801)	−4.560*** (0.802)
Temp. not working			−1.223 (1.839)	−1.258 (1.829)
Unemployed			−3.279** (1.061)	−3.282** (1.068)
Retired			−0.372 (1.356)	−0.296 (1.829)
In school			−5.643*** (1.526)	−5.549*** (1.518)
Keeping house			−4.116*** (0.922)	−4.068*** (0.924)
Other			1.461 (2.089)	1.046 (2.110)
Region (Northeast is control)
Midwest			−0.376 (1.112)	−0.409 (1.114)
South			0.743 (0.790)	0.704 (0.792)
West			0.432 (0.781)	0.404 (0.785)
Not born in U.S.			−0.848 (0.592)	−0.832 (0.591)
R ²	0.003	0.004	0.213	0.215
Constant	38.839*** (0.368)	38.501*** (0.563)	20.388*** (1.878)	20.179*** (1.888)
N	1,965	1,965	1,965	1,965

Standard errors in parentheses.

†p < .1, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

All reported stats are weighted using the GSS weighting variable.

While being in school was not significant for Black respondents, being in school is significant for Latinxs. Being born in the U.S. was also statistically not significant. The R-square for this model is the smallest of all subsamples (R = 0.215), implying that there may be another effect occurring that remains undiscovered. Latinxs were the youngest group in our sample, indicating that possibly more of them are in school.

Latinx groups had lower means for occupational prestige and education than both Black and white groups, and the religion variables were not significant. To reiterate, we believe this is because of the racial and ethnic heterogeneity of Latinx Americans as a whole. Because Latinxs respondents could be white, Black, or multiracial, any racial effect is impossible to measure with the GSS. Further analyses should use other datasets to pursue the nuance and complexity of Latinx Americans and the differences in their outcomes based on which racial and ethnic groups they belong to.

Discussion

We have used the theoretical frameworks of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991) and complex religion (Wilde 2016, 2017, 2018) to investigate the nature of religious stratification within racial groups. When we separate our racial groups into categories of religious affiliation, we can see that religion does play a role in determining occupational outcomes within racial groups.

What is it about being Mainline Protestant that remains significant for white Americans? Mainline Protestants are the heirs of the WASP label so frequently used in the twentieth century and maintain a legacy of social capital in the United States. While we argue that access to networks for Black Americans in their churches increases occupational prestige, for white Mainliners it is likely their already-existing historical access to powerful networks and class status that make them more likely to identify as Mainline Protestants (Keister 2011). Even among white Americans, religion is a signifier of unequal cultural capital. White Evangelicals may also use church as a form of networking more frequently than white Mainliners due to the importance of attendance for Evangelicals in the interaction for the white subsample.

Latinx Americans were found to not significantly differ from one another based on religious affiliation or attendance. While we have already noted the racially heterogenous nature of Latinx groups as well as the sampling issues in the GSS, another point to note is that Latinx Protestants tend to use religious communities as a way of developing civic skills as well as job-related networking (Mulder, Ramos, and Martí 2017). These findings may also align with Bonilla-Silva’s (2003) hypothesis about some Latinxs passing as “honorary whites” and that they may gain access to networks and social capital through being white-passing outside of church settings. If white-passing Latinxs can “perform whiteness” to the satisfaction of white employers, they will not need to rely on religious networks for job opportunities (Warren 2001). However, this phenotypical advantage would not apply for Afro-Latinxs or Indigenous Latinxs. These non-findings indicate that treating Latinx Americans as a homogenous racial category may be inhibiting scholars’ ability to empirically understand the complexities of how Latinx Americans experience racism in the United States. Additionally, while Latinx Americans may attend multiracial churches, churches may have systems of segregating Spanish-speaking congregants into special service times that keep Latinx Americans from being integrated into the larger religious community (Martinez 2018). This would keep Latinx Americans from gaining access to the whiter networks within the church.

What is it about being Evangelical that is significant for Black Americans? Being Evangelical appears to be affiliated with higher occupational attainment compared to Black Americans in other religious traditions. Multiracial churches are congregations where no one racial group makes up more than 80% of the congregation (Emerson and Kim 2003; Emerson and Woo 2006). As of 2013, only 5% of Protestant congregations met the qualifications of this definition of multiracial (Edwards, Christerson, and Emerson 2013); however, new data says nearly 25% of Evangelical congregations are multiracial (Dougherty, Chaves, and Emerson 2020).

Because most multiracial congregations are Evangelical, Evangelical churches are at the forefront of debates about the potential of “multicultural” congregations to be sites of racial reconciliation and justice (Edgell Becker 1998). Claims from some scholars that multicultural church spaces can reduce racism have been met with some pushback, as critics argue that diversifying a congregation is not a solution for addressing systemic racism (Emerson and Smith 2001; Edwards 2008; Pitt 2010). In many cases, multiracial churches are simply churches that retain their “white characteristics” (white hegemony) but congratulate themselves for being “diverse” (Edwards 2008; Pitt 2010). However, it is possible that Evangelical congregations are inadvertently creating access to social capital for Black Americans that was not previously occurring in more segregated church communities. Some Black Americans who attend Evangelical churches do so explicitly because they want to be in a predominantly white church (Pitt 2010).

While most Evangelicals maintain very individualistic and politically conservative views on racial inequality and justice, their efforts to recruit people of color into their congregations have been more successful than Mainline or Catholic churches (Pitt 2010; Mulder, Ramos, and Martí 2017). The “multicultural” church movement across Evangelical churches in the United States has been rightly critiqued as more about lip service than creating real institutional change, but the push for congregational diversity has created more multiracial representation in Evangelical churches than other non-Black Protestant Christian affiliations (Becker 1998).

Another possibility is that Black people in Evangelical churches may be passing what Bracey and Moore (2017) describe as “race tests”: a series of interactions between white church members and Black attendees where the white congregants challenge the Black person in question with conversations about racialized political issues—gun control, “Black culture,” or meritocracy. Those who “pass” this type of racist grooming are able to have some sort of belonging in the community; those who “fail” often chose to leave due to the psychological toll of racist microaggressions. Perhaps those who remain and doggedly persist receive occupational rewards, but at what emotional cost? It is unsurprising that most Black Americans prefer religious communities where they are not used as a token of diversity or resented by white congregants for “entreating” on their predominantly white space.

There is the possibility that Black Evangelicals were already middle class, and their class status gave them the material resources to seek out white and multiracial congregations, such as living in the same middle-class neighborhoods and having their children attend the same schools. In the reversal of the causal relationship, Black middle-class Americans may be passing a “class test” rather than a race one in order to enter predominantly white religious communities. Occupational prestige functions then as a proxy for the individualistic and meritocratic ideology that allows Black Christians to pass a “class test” to assimilate into predominantly white spaces, such as predominantly white workplaces and neighborhoods (Anderson 2015). Future research should analyze the ways that multiracial churches may be depending on class status as a way to develop collective solidarity and identity across different racial groups in church settings.

Church and parachurch organizations function as one of the primary ways that people maintain loose network ties in their communities (Everton 2018). Being members, volunteers, and participants of a church shapes the loose ties that exist in a community. Because loose ties shape opportunities to obtain social capital and occupation opportunities (Lin 2000), attending church with people who have access to high prestige occupation networks and high social capital will affect one’s opportunities to increase their social capital and occupational prestige. Because of the racialized nature of American society, particularly in religious communities, network ties are inevitably racialized, perpetuating the ways that racial minorities, particularly Black Americans, are excluded from opportunities for increased social capital and occupational prestige.

Our analysis does have some crucial limitations. The nature of RELTRAD makes it challenging to parse more specific denominational categories among Black Americans to better understand which specific denominations have increased occupational statuses. To do this would also require a larger Black subsample of respondents than the GSS could provide in this study. Combining Latinx Americans into one racial category likely affected our findings, for reasons previously stated. Additionally, because the Spanish version of the GSS was not offered until 2006, we were unable to incorporate this variable into our analysis. Adding a variable that is missing for half of our respondents would have created issues with missing data.

The cross-sectional nature of the GSS makes it impossible to assess any longitudinal changes that take place among respondents, especially as first-generation immigrants may settle in and develop networks and resources. Further disaggregation about congregational size, congregational racial demographics, closeness to fellow church members, and congregational financial resources are also unavailable through the GSS and would be insightful contributions to understanding the role of congregations in providing job resources.

Parsing out racial and ethnic groups within the Latinx category may uncover more meaningful findings that are beyond the span of this article. Many Latinx Americans appear white and gain the cultural benefits of whiteness in American society, while other Latinx Americans are Black and are treated as Black in society. However, Afro-Latinx is a meaningful category with ethnic and racial meaning different from African Americans, complicating the possibility of categorizing Afro-Latinxs under the umbrella of Black Americans. Finally, analyzing Asian American religious groups in a sample with a large enough population of Asian American respondents may render interesting insights into the religious lives of Asian Americans.

Black Catholics make an important addition to multiracial churching discourse. While an in-depth analysis of Black Catholics is beyond the scope of this article, understanding the Catholic church as a site of multiracial religious community in the United States is important for future research on Catholic parishes and communities (Pratt 2019).

Future research on religion and cultural capital should include educational attainment as a crucial aspect of capital. Education marks the possession of an intangible cultural, occupational resource in society (Lin 2001). If education is such an important part of differentiating outcomes across religious groups, especially among white religious denominations, does denomination play a role in educational attainment? Another possibility for future research may be to incorporate Bonilla-Silva’s emphasis on colorism into the quantitative analysis. What does distribution of capital based on skin tone mean for multiracial Americans?

Researchers need to understand that religion does not affect all racial groups in the same way or to the same extent. When we simply “control for race” in our models about religion and attainment outcomes, we fail to accurately identify the dynamics of religion in different racial groups. Alternately, religion can help us get a clearer picture of the variance in attainment outcomes within racial minority groups.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by a University Research Grant obtained from Baylor University.

ORCID iD

Hannah R. Evans

Notes

Author biographies

Hannah R. Evans is a doctoral fellow at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research and is finishing her PhD in the department of Sociology at Baylor University. Her research interests include critical Whiteness studies of Christianity, emerging adulthood, and multiracial congregations.

Jerry Z. Park is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Baylor University and an affiliate fellow of the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion. He earned his masters and PhD degrees from the University of Notre Dame. Recent publications have covered topics such as religion and workplace attitudes, religious attitudes of academic scientists, Asian-American religiosity, and religious media consumption. He serves as associate editor for the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and is an editorial board member for Social Psychology Quarterly.

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