Toward a Theory of Religious Influence

The authors of a recent article published in the American Sociological Review argued that "the relationship of religion to economic and occupational success is the most viable topic of debate in the sociology of religion in the United States. "' Thus began another contribution to the often confusing and somewhat overflowing file of sociological studies in the "Weberian tradition. " It is apparent that much of our theory guiding empirical research in the sociology of religion in the United States has been drawn from Weber's thesis concerning ascetic Protestantism and capitalism. But the results of this research have been confusing. In an early study of the relationship between religion and economic position, Cantril found that there was a higher ratio of Protestants in higher educational and economic status groups than was the case in the lower educational and economic groups. ' In another survey reported five years later, Liston Pope found essentially the same relationship.3 However, in a very recent analysis of survey data, Glenn and Hyland report that "by the mid-1960's Catholics ranked above Protestants in most aspects of status. "4 And there is more confusion. Mayer and Sharp, while they did qualify their interpretation to some extent, found in their metropolitan Detroit sample that there was at least some support for a modern day Weber thesis.5 On the other hand, Mack, Yellin, and Murphy reported that there is apparently no relationship between being Catholic or Protestant and being upwardly or downwardly mobile. " To go yet another step, the data and analysis of Veroff, Gurin, and Feld indicate that Catholics actually score higher than Protestants on tests of achievement motivation.7 Finally, the study of Andrew Greeley8 and that of Bressler and Westoff9 report no significant differences between Catholics and Protestants along the lines that Weber suggested many years ago. * This paper was presented to the Annual Meetings of the Pacific Sociological Association, Long Beach, California, March 30, 1967. The author is indebted to Professor Benton Johnson, University of Oregon, for his valuable criticisms and suggestions in the preparation of this paper. This paper has been developed in part out of research supported by a contract with the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education. ** Editor's Note: Dick White's untimely death on June 7, 1967, put an end to the career of a promising young sociologist of religion. We feel this article is an indication of that promise and hope it will be an inspiration to others to continue the work that is started here. --J.M. 1 Norval D. Glenn and Ruth Hyland, "Religious Preference and Worldly Success: Some Evidence from National Surveys," American Sociological Review, 32 (February, 1967), p. 73. 2 Hadley Cantril, "Educational and Economic Composition of Religious Groups: An Analysis of Poll Data," American Journal of Sociology, 48 (March, 1943), pp. 574-579. 3 Liston Pope, "Religion and the Class Structure," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 256 (March, 1948), pp. 8491. 4 Glenn and Hyland, op. cit. 5 Albert J. Mayer and Harry Sharp, "Religious Preference and Worldly Success," American Sociological Review, 27 (April, 1962), pp. 218-227. 6 Raymond W. Mack, Raymond J. Murphy, and Seymour Yellin, "The Protestant Ethic, Level of Aspiration, and Social Mobility: An Empirical Test," American Sociological Review, 21 (June, 1956), pp. 295-300. 7 Joseph Veroff, Sheila Feld, and Gerald Gurin, "Achievement Motivation and Religious Background," American Sociological Review, 27 (April, 1962), pp. 205-217. 8 Andrew M. Greeley, "A Note on the Origins of Religious Differences," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 3 (Fall, 1963), pp. 21-31. 9 Marvin Bressler and Charles Westoff, "Catholic Education, Economic Values and Achievement," American Journal of Sociology, 69 (November, 1963), pp. 225-233.