Religion’s Social Ladders

RELIGION’S SOCIAL LADDERS

It used to be that religious social climbing was a big factor in keeping the liberal churches going. Episcopal, United Church of Christ (Congregational), and Presbyterian churches all counted on the upwardly mobile’s wanting to belong to a church that bespoke their achieved social status. Peter Berger has described “the young Baptist salesman who becomes an Episcopal sales executive.” A writer in an Episcopal magazine recently said his church shouldn’t worry about competing with the evangelicals. Episcopalian- ism, he somewhat smugly asserted, is America’s “religious finishing school.” That frankly elitist assumption made considerable sense in the 1950s and 1960s, but no longer.

RJ

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Richard John Neuhaus

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RELIGION’S SOCIAL LADDERS

It used to be that religious social climbing was a big factor in keeping the liberal churches going. Episcopal, United Church of Christ (Congregational), and Presbyterian churches all counted on the upwardly mobile’s wanting to belong to a church that bespoke their achieved social status. Peter Berger has described “the young Baptist salesman who becomes an Episcopal sales executive.” A writer in an Episcopal magazine recently said his church shouldn’t worry about competing with the evangelicals. Episcopalian- ism, he somewhat smugly asserted, is America’s “religious finishing school.” That frankly elitist assumption made considerable sense in the 1950s and 1960s, but no longer.