CHAPTER TWO AT EASE WITH OUR OWN KIND: WORSHIP PRACTICES AND CLASS SEGREGATION IN AMERICAN RELIGION Timothy

J. Nelson

Theoretically, no obstacle keeps lower-class people out of the Christian Church, but they wouldnt feel comfortable there. James West, Plainville, U.S.A. (1964, 160) [T]he religious segregation of mill workers was not due to the desire of fashionable uptown churches or conservative rural churches to exclude them The lives of the mill operatives were different from other people, leading them to desire churches of their own in which they could feel perfectly at ease. Liston Pope, Millhands and Preachers (1942, 723) For most Protestants, theology plays a minor role in selection of a church. They go where they nd their own kind of people. W. Lloyd Warner et al., Democracy in Jonesville (1964, 1667)

The relationship between social class and religious behavior is one of the oldest and most well-established areas of inquiry in the eld of sociology. Beginning with Marxs comments on religion, alienation, and class ideology, Webers analyses of religious styles among different social strata, and continuing with eighty years worth of empirical studies in the United States, it is safe to say that this disciplinary path is a well-trodden one. Although some recent studies have downplayed the role of class in American religion (Roof and McKinney 1987; Park and Reimer 2002), choosing instead to emphasize what they see as an unmooring of organized religion from its traditional social sources, the evidence clearly suggests that class is still a powerful force that continues to shape religious identication and behavior (Smith and Faris 2005; McCloud 2007). Documenting the correlation between social class and various forms of religious behavior is one thing, however, but explaining them is quite another. In the pages that follow, I briey summarize the four major

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empirical ndings concerning class and American religion, narrow the focus of this paper to just one of these, and review the most prominent theory that has been offered to explain it. After critiquing this explanation, I then develop an alternative theoretical approach drawn from Pierre Bourdieus work on class and cultural consumption, focusing on his concept of habitus. Dividing the worship service into three dimensionsaesthetic, linguistic and physicalI review a selection of ethnographic studies of American religion to see how they support and illuminate this alternative approach. SOCIAL CLASS AND AMERICAN RELIGION Over seventy-ve years ago, H. Richard Niebuhr (1929) published his hugely inuential work The Social Sources of Denominationalism. With the ethical force of an Old Testament prophet, Niebuhr (1929, 25) denounced Protestant denominations in America as represent[ing] the moral failure of Christianity by their conformity in reproducing the social order of classes and castes. While never reducing religion to an epiphenomenon of class, he emphasized that the energies, goals and motives of religious movements are channeled by social factors, particularly race and class, into particular forms that reect their position in society (Niebuhr 1929, 27). That same year, the Lynds seminal study of a typical American community was published as Middletown and received great public acclaim, including a laudatory front-page review in the Sunday New York Times and immediate best-seller status (Lynd and Lynd 1957). Originally intended as a survey of religious life in a typical American community, the Lynds took an explicitly anthropological approach to religion by situating it within its broader social contextparticularly the two-fold division they found in Muncie, Indiana, between the business class and the working class. In their analysis, the Lynds repeatedly stressed the inuence of this class division in shaping the religious behavior, attitudes, and organizations of Muncieto the extent that the foundation which had sponsored the study deemed it to be anti-religious and ultimately unpublishable (Connolly 2005). These two inuential works, one historical and one anthropological, set the agenda for the following decades of research on the link between social class and religious expression. In the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s, over a dozen studies of various American communities showed conclusively that local congregations had a distinctive and recognizable

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class element to them, not only in terms of who attended, but also in the culture of the organization itself and the style of its activities. Overlapping these qualitative studies and continuing into the 1960s, those working in the newly developing eld of survey research also documented the powerful inuence of class on the type of church one afliated with, the frequency of church attendance (or whether one attended religious services at all), and even how much interest one expressed in religion (Cantril 1943; Pope 1948; Bultena 1949; Lazerwitz 1962; Dillingham 1965; Goode 1966; Lenski 1953). At the same time, sociologists showed that social classes tended to differ not only in where Americans went to church and how often, but also in the forms of their religious involvement. Working primarily with the then-dominant concept of church and sect as distinctive forms of religious organization, Dynes (1955), Demerath (1965), Estus and Overington (1970), and Stark (1972) all found that the lower classes displayed what Demerath termed more sect-like involvement in organized religion, while the upper classes favored a church-like approach (Demerath 1961). In other words, while the upper classes attended church more frequently and had higher levels of organizational involvement, lower class members were more bounded by their association with the church, both socially in terms of friendship networks, and ideologically in their adherence to orthodox doctrine and its authority over their everyday lives. By the beginning of the 1970s the empirical support for the connection between social class and religious behavior in America was fairly well established for the following relationships: 1. Among the general population, higher social status is positively related to both membership in and identication with any organized religious group. 2. Among church members, higher status is associated with higher rates of church attendance, with assumption of leadership positions within congregations and higher levels of religious knowledge. 3. Among church members, lower status is associated with more concentration of ones friendship network within in the congregation, more personal devotionalism, higher rates of doctrinal orthodoxy and reported rates of religious experience. 4. Among church members, differences in social status are associated with membership in particular kinds of religious organizations (especially for Protestants) and these associations have remained stable for many decades.

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In sum, these studies showed that the American population is recruited selectively by social class into any form of religious organization and that possessing a religious identity varies according to social status. Those lower status persons who do belong to or identify religiously participate in quite different ways than do higher status persons, and there is a marked tendency toward segregation by class into different kinds of religious organizations. It is this last elementthe propensity of the church-afliated public to identify with different religious organizations based, at least in part, upon social class that I want to focus on in this paper. I do so because, of the four ndings listed above, it is the most consistently supported empirically, and it is the aspect of class and religion that is most amenable to the theoretical perspective to be developed below. Before doing so however let me briey discuss why I think a new theoretical approach is necessary. EXPLAINING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CLASS AND RELIGIOUS PREFERENCE To understand the inclination of social classes to separate into different religious organizations, sociologists have taken note of which particular religious groups tend to draw from which social classes. These patterns are not only robust but have also shown remarkable stability since they were rst systematically observed. In their examination of pooled data from multiple waves of the General Social Survey, Smith and Faris (2005) conclude that the ranking of American religious groups by the educational attainment, household income and occupational prestige of its members has remained remarkably steady since the 1970s, despite the sustained period of economic growth in the mid-to-late 1990s. The groups at the top of their listUnitarians, Jews, Episcopalians, and mainline Presbyteriansconsistently enjoyed signicantly higher levels of education, income, and occupational prestige than most of the groups below them, and these same religious groups have maintained this position for decades (Smith and Faris 2005, 100). The groups at the other end of this hierarchyJehovahs Witnesses, black Baptists, Southern Baptists, and Pentecostalshave also captured the lower portions of the class continuum for a long period of time. What needs to be accounted for then, is not just the fact of class segregation into different religious groups, but the apparently strong afnity between specic classes and particular religious traditions.

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However, explaining this connection is complex because religious organizations are multi-faceted and several dimensions could be operative in attracting different classes through their front doors. Is it the congregations theology, moral code, bureaucratic form, history and tradition, or set of worship practices that are drawing people from one side of the tracks or the other? Smith and Faris (2005, 102) note that as a generalization:
[T]he higher ranked religious groups tend to be more theologically liberal denominations and traditions, while the lowest ranked tend to be more conservative and sectarian. The highest ranked tend toward more hierarchical and federated church polities, whereas the lower ranked tend to represent more low-church, congregational, or believers church traditions. Socio-economically higher ranked religious groups also tend to involve more formal, liturgical, tradition-oriented styles of worship; lower ranked groups tend toward more openly expressive, informal, emotional, and Spirit-lled styles of worship.

An empirical generalization like this, while certainly useful as a broad summary of ndings, is not a theory; it cannot tell us exactly what it is about the theological orientations, polities, or worship styles (or other, perhaps still unmentioned and unexamined factors) that are operative in attracting different classes into different religious organizations.1 Given the stability of the link between social class and particular religious organizations over many decades, one might expect that some hypotheses have been developed to account for this phenomenon. And they havebut in a systematically uneven and therefore inherently distorted fashion. The reason for this is that instead of examining the class attributes of religious groups across the entire class spectrum, they have tended to focus almost exclusively on the religious beliefs and practices of the lower classes, usually framed as a deviation from the implicit norm of middle class belief and behavior. This has led to the development of particularistic explanations based solely upon circumstances thought to be unique to the poor and working class (and these have been usually based on middle class prejudice more than empirical evidence).

1 Of course, one way to deal with this is to attribute these status differentials, not to any particular aspect of these religious groups at all, but rather to historical accident. Thus Roof and McKinney (1987, 109) assert that, the hierarchy rests largely upon time of entry into the system and subsequent pace of assimilation. Johnstone (1992, 180) makes the same argument as well.

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The literature on lower class religion tends to be scattered across several disciplines and most published works focus on single historical or ethnographic case studies. Nevertheless, there is an almost ubiquitous mechanism in the explanations for the t between lower class position in society and religious styles of worship. This common mechanism is what I have referred to elsewhere under the label of psychological functionalism, and which can be characterized as a hybrid approach loosely based upon aspects of both Marxist and Freudian theory (Nelson 1996). The essential argument goes something like this: the unique situation of the lower class (material deprivation, oppression, low self-esteem, alienation, lack of control over life circumstances, etc.) creates a strong impetus for psychic relief from these supposedly unbearable pressures. Particular forms of religion (as well as their functional equivalents such as excessive alcohol consumption, drug use, promiscuous sex, rowdy public behavior and other typically lower class behaviors) offer one such avenue of reliefhence their appeal to this class. The form of relief offered by these religious groups varies according to the particular needs emphasized by different writers. So, for example, Liston Pope (1942, 134) emphasizes the dreariness and repetition of mill work along with the workers lack of control over most aspects of their lives. The function of their frenetic religious services, then, is release from psychological repression fullling a need for self-expression. One nds many examples of these explanations, particularly in works published before the 1970s. But this approach is certainly not limited to older studies. Several decades ago, Wilson and Clow (1981, 249) argued that the appeal of Pentecostalism to the working class rested upon anxieties over a fall into a poverty level which robs them of self control, and that dancing in the Spirit is a way that these anxieties are expressed symbolically, and thus dealt with subconsciously. Even more recently, Coreno (2002, 357) contended that for the working class (and for lower-tiers of the professional and managerial classes who experience relative deprivation), fundamentalism offers a way to fend off alienation, a by-product of economic and status insecurity and other experiences of subordination. The problem with this approach lies in the normative assumptions it makes about both class and religion, assumptions which have the effect of labeling lower-class religious forms as deviant, and then explaining this deviation in terms of the authors own (usually biased) views of the nature of lower class life. I wont take the time here to present extensive

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evidence for this argument, but support for this assertion can be seen simply in how the practices and beliefs associated with lower-class religion are characterized and how they are contrasted to an implicit normthose of the middle class. To give one small example, taken from Niebuhr himself: Religious enthusiasm declined in the later days because Methodist Christianity became more literate and rational and because, with increasing wealth and culture, other escapes from the monotony and exhaustion of hard labor became available (Niebuhr 1929, 63, my emphasis).

THE RELIGIOUS HABITUS Because the alternative approach to class and religious practice I develop here is based on Bourdieus concept of habitus, in this section I rst dene what Bourdieu means by this term, discussing the role it plays in his explanation of class-based cultural patterns and the social processes by which a specic class habitus is formed. Then I extend the discussion to encompass religious practices, particularly as they relate to worship, and offer some predictions and areas for further exploration. As one of the central and recurring concepts in Bourdieus formidable and inuential oeuvre, there has been much debate swirling about the idea of habitus in the theoretical literature, most of which I will not concern myself with here. Bourdieu himself was very consistent in dening and defending this concept in terms similar to this denition offered in his article Social Space and Symbolic Power, habitus is both a system of schemes of production of practices and a system of perception and apperception of practices. And, in both of these dimensions, its operation expresses the social position in which it was elaborated (Bourdieu 1989, 19). Or, more concisely, the habitus is both the generative principle of objectively classiable judgments and the system of classication of these practices (Bourdieu 1984, 170). In other words, habitus is a mechanism, internalized within the individual and usually preconscious, which generates both patterns of action and patterns of likes and dislikes for different forms of cultural objects and practices (tastes). These tastes are principles of selection that not only inuence ones own actions, but are also judgments on the tastes of others. The habitus thus incorporates both a predisposition for selecting some kinds of cultural objects and practices over others,

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as well as a scheme for evaluating and ranking ones own preferences relative to all other perceived options. In addition, Bourdieu argues that the habitus is transposable, that is, the choices one makes in any single eld of cultural consumption are not independent but systematically linked to ones choices in all other areas of cultural preference. Systematicity is found in all the propertiesand propertywith which individuals and groups surround themselves, houses, furniture, paintings, books, cars, spirits, cigarettes, perfume, clothes, and in the practices in which they manifest their distinction, sports, games, entertainments, only because it is the synthetic unity of the habitus, the unifying, generative principle of all practices (Bourdieu 1984, 173). What gives the habitus such a powerful uniformity in its effects across such diverse areas of cultural consumption? It is the inuence of ones cumulative experiences due to social locationparticularly classas well as the recognition of ones place in the status hierarchy. These class-based experiences and perceptions (predominantly those anchored in the formative stages of the life course) profoundly shape ones dispositions regarding cultural choices, even later in life, and even in the face of intragenerational class mobility. For Bourdieu, experience of the particular class position that characterizes a given location in social space imprints a particular set of dispositions on the individual (Weininger 2005, 92). Bourdieus (1984) analysis of French cultural tastes and lifestyles in his work Distinction roughly identies four social types (dened according to the amount of economic and cultural capital they possess) and their corresponding habitus, characterized rather tersely by Swartz (1997, 109) as ostentatious indulgence and ease within the upper class, aristocratic aestheticism among intellectuals, awkward pretension by middle-class strivers, and anti-pretentious ignorance and conformity within the working class. These more general orientations are embodied within particular elds of cultural consumption and Bourdieus analysis of cultural practices places special emphasis on preferences in the realms of art, music and literature because these areas are the most closely tied to the uneven distribution of cultural capital within the social hierarchy. The capacity to fully appreciate high cultural objects and practices (e.g. opera, abstract art, or poetry) is typically acquired either through ones family or through the formal educational system. The subordinate classes are relatively excluded, due to family background and poor or truncated schooling, from acquiring the decoding tools necessary

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to appreciate these high cultural forms. While not as socially valorized as the elds of music, art and literature, Bourdieu argues that tastes in furniture, clothing, vacation spots, movies, restaurants, and other forms of cultural expression are also structured according to class habitus. The end result of these processes is that each social class adopts similar sets of tastes and practices across a wide range of cultural elds. This not only predisposes members of the same class to experience feelings of afnity for one another based upon similar lifestyles and preferences, but to feel hostile to, ridicule or reject the cultural choices of those unlike themselves. This class racism (Bourdieus term) is the inevitable result of the clash of styles and preferences held by each class and class fraction and leads, ultimately, to reproduction of the social order.

HABITUS AND WORSHIP PRACTICES Although Bourdieus approach to class and culture was inspired by Max Webers writings on religion, Bourdieu himself spent little time on the topic and never gave it much serious attention (Swartz 1997, 41; Verter 2003). Fortunately, several scholars have begun to take Bourdieus own approach and apply it to religion, focusing particularly on his concepts of eld and cultural capital (Swartz 1996; Verter 2003). The current paper attempts to further this important work by showing the utility of the concept of habitus as it is applied to social class and religious practices. In order to extend Bourdieus approach in this way, several assumptions must be accepted. First, because Bourdieus approach is based upon the notion of a market of cultural goods and practices (which further implies at least limited freedom of choice), one has to accept the idea that religious practices can be usefully analyzed within a market framework, and that individuals or families have at least some freedom to choose their religious afliations. I wont belabor this point, as there seems to be general agreement here among theorists of different orientations that this is indeed the case, at least as far as the contemporary American situation is concerned. More importantly (and, perhaps, more controversially), this approach encourages an alternative way of conceptualizing religious practices as not simply the result of religious beliefs or traditions, but also as forms of cultural consumption or production with a relatively precise social

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value on local prestige markets. This is not a class determinist theory. The religious practices themselves may derive from religious sources such as Biblical texts, prophetic revelations, church traditions or whatever sources of authority are normative for each group. But when these practices are performed, they take on a social valuation in the eyes of both the practitioners and others who have knowledge of them, whether by participation or by reputation. For example, the practice of speaking in tongues derives from Pentecostal theology and tradition, but it has taken on an additional meaning that locates its practitioners in social space, both for those who esteem it and for those who disdain it. Third, though religious practices may be performed by individuals either in private or within view of others outside of their religious orientation (praying before meals, street or door-to-door evangelism, etc.), the primary location of religious practice remains within the context of the local congregation. More specically, the majority of religious practices are performed within the congregational worship service or other communal gatherings, such as Sunday School, Bible studies, or small groups. These are what I refer to, however imperfectly, as worship practices, which is a subset of a larger category of religious practices done both inside and outside of the communal context. Applying Bourdieus approach to this arena, one would expect that worship practices are ltered (adopted, rejected, or modied) through the dominant class habitus of particular social groups (congregations and denominations) in a way that is homologous to their cultural practices in other domains. Some of these differences will be preconscious and not articulated as part of an explicit system of tastes, although they will still serve to segregate classes into different religious organizations (based upon a more instinctual reaction like revulsion or discomfort). Other practices will be known, recognized and articulated as distinctions tied to a status hierarchywith the same result of relative religious segregation by class. Following Bourdieus own analyses and his emphases on particular cultural domains, I suggest the following three broad areas for an initial investigation of worship practices: the aesthetic, the linguistic, and the physical, (as far as it involves bodily expression). If my alternative approach has any explanatory utility, one should be able to identify distinct patterns of religious practices across these three dimensions. First, there should be a correlation between a religious groups general class location and the dominant aesthetic, linguistic, and bodily practices

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within their worship services. Further, these particular religious practices should be homologous to those within the more secular cultural domains of that class. Third, at least some of these practices should have an explicit salience regarding the class/status hierarchy. In other words, people should express taste preferences regarding these practices and use them as a basis for making distinctions between their own group and those of groups with different class compositions. This process of making distinctions based on taste is crucial, Bourdieu argues, to misrecognizing and therefore reproducing the class system. The ideal empirical investigation of this approach would be a set of participant-observation studies of the worship practices in one or more class-diverse communities. The community approach is crucial because such a study would have to encompass the whole range of available religious options and capture the sorting processes within a more-orless self-contained religious ecology. The eld observations should rst assess the degree to which different social classes are in fact sorted into the areas local congregations, and then determine the patterns of variation within the three dimensions mentioned above. Finally, qualitative interviews with congregants from across the class spectrum would explore whether there is indeed a class-based set of taste preferences operating to sort people into particular congregations.

Table 1: Community studies, ordered by date of eldwork with names of communities studied 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Lynd and Lynd, Middletown Warner, The Social Life of a Modern Community Powdermaker, After Freedom Davis, Gardner, and Gardner, Deep South Dollard, Caste and Class in a Southern Town Drake and Cayton. Black Metropolis Pope, Millhands and Preachers West, Plainville, U.S.A. Hollingshead, Elmtowns Youth 19241925 19301934 19321934 19331935 19351936 19361941 19381939 19391941 19411942 Muncie, IN Newburyport, MA Indianola, MS Natchez, MS Indianola, MS Chicago, IL Gastonia, NC Wheatland, MO Morris, IL

(Continued)

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Table 1: (Cont.,) Community studies, ordered by date of eldwork with names of communities studied 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. Warner et al., Democracy in Jonesville Rubin, Plantation County Morland, Millways of Kent Lewis Blackways of Kent Seeley, Sim, and Loosely, Crestwood Heights Vidich and Bensman. Small Town in Mass Society Gallaher, Plainville Fifteen Years Later 1940194? 19471948 19481949 1949 19481953 19511953 19541955 Morris, IL Wilcox County, AL York, SC York, SC Forest Hill Village, Toronto, CAN Candor, NY Wheatland, MO

AU 1

Unfortunately, to my knowledge, such a study does not exist. But there is a set of data that can give us a sense of whether this theoretical approach may be a useful one. For roughly three decades, from the mid 1920s until the mid 1950s, sociologists and anthropologists conducted over fteen in-depth studies of various American communities that include the basic social class composition of individual congregations and at least some description of their worship practices (see Table 1). Although imperfect in many ways (including a tendency toward a strong middle-class bias in descriptions of lower-class religion), I use these studies as a kind of data set, and code them for patterns that illuminate the issues under consideration here.

AESTHETICS I begin with surfaces because, although they are furthest from the core of worship practices, these are the elements rst encountered by potential participants and thus are essential to the rst impressions sustained. The aesthetic dimension of the worship service includes several diverse elements. First, there is the physical space in which the ritual takes placeits architecture, dcor, and physical surroundings, including the neighborhood in which it is located. The clothing, hair, and makeup styles of participants are a second element to consider here, and nally, there are the stylistic aspects of the ritual action itself, particularly regarding the music used in the service.

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As collective social events, worship services occur in physical space, usually in a building owned by the congregation or the denomination it is afliated with. Even todays televised religion includes this element, as most are simply broadcasts of services taking place in a specic time and place (and the PTL style programs must have a set with furnishings and decorations). Although some worship services are held in rented space or in public areas, there is still ample opportunity for stylistic expression through means other than architecture and dcor. As W. Lloyd Warner (1941) and his team discovered decades ago in Yankee City, the part of town in which a structure is located is also a very important component of social prestige, but one which may be the most difcult for congregations to alter (although the massive relocation of churches and synagogues to the suburbs in the post-World War II era shows that this strategy is far from rare). St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton (1962, 632), studying the African American scene on Chicagos South Side, note that [The lower-class African American] religious praise the Lord in vacant stores and in houses, abandoned theaters, remodeled garages, and halls. These small churches tend to be concentrated on run-down, low-rent, business streets and in generally undesirable residential areas. But what about the buildings themselves? As with residential houses, church buildings tend to reect the nancial resources of the congregation. The Lynds (1952, 336) wrote that in Middletown:
The economic and social considerations which appear to be becoming more potent in marking off one religious group from another are reected in the houses of worship. Some of these buildings are imposing structures of stone and brick, while others, particularly in the outlying sections inhabited by the poorer workers, are weather-beaten wooden shelters little larger or better built than the poorer sorts of dwellings.

However, according to the approach being developed here, the congregations level of cultural capital should be almost as important as its economic capital in inuencing the architectural style. Unfortunately, none of these community studies compared architectural styles of various church buildings, or interviewed people about their opinions on the matter. There is also a confounding factor: while urban church structures tend to be recycled and may have several owners over the years (thus not accurately reecting the aesthetic preferences of its current occupants), the construction of new churches is mostly conned to the suburban middle class neighborhoods.

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Given the greater freedom of innovationand at far less expense to individual congregations, class contrasts may appear more strongly in interior decoration than in architectural style or church location. The comparison to residential homes is instructive here as well, and it has been almost a century since social scientists developed an index of social class based upon observations of home furnishings (Lasswell 1965). Working within an explicitly Bourdieuian framework, Douglas Holt interviewed respondents in one community, some with high cultural capital (HCC) and some with low cultural capital (LCC), and uncovered several dimensions of aesthetic cultural preferences (Holt 1997, Holt 1998). Specically, he found that LCCs evaluate everyday objects like clothing and furniture according to utilitarian properties (durability, ease of care), favored known and unied styles (Victorian, Country) in their interior decorating, and aspired to a lifestyle of material abundance and luxury (having the good things of life). In contrast, HCCs approached these aesthetic choices from a more eclectic and subjective perspective, valorizing the idiosyncratic over the mass-produced, quality over quantity, and spiritual over material aspects of consumption. Once again, unfortunately, the community studies do not take the time to describe the interiors of the churches they observed. The one possible exception is Drake and Caytons summary opinion that in black churches of Chicagos south side, Upper class church buildings tend to be small, but are very well cared for and artistically decorated, while in contrast, the store front churches are full of tasteless ornamentation (Drake and Cayton 1962, 539, 633). Without a more objective description, of course, this doesnt do us much good. There is more evidence, though, on a matter that gets a little bit closer to the substance of the worship ritual: the style of music used in the service. The most important dimension here is the division between more classical styles and folk or popular styles. In the time period these community studies were done, the popular jazz form was considered a lower-class musical style and was found more often in the working and lower-class congregations. Morland (1964, 120) observes that in the white churches of York, South Carolina:
There is more of such clapping and tapping of feet at the Church of God than in the Wesleyan Methodist and the hymns are more jazzy. The music of these hymns, especially in the Church of God, have a denite beat and a fast, swingy rhythm. Most of the songs are happy but a few are reminiscent of the blues for example, If You Ever Leave

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Me Jesus, Ill Die. Others tell a story in ballad fashion, almost mountain style. The pianist plays all of these hymns in a jazz manner, with numerous off-beats, runs, and trills.

Drake and Cayton (1962, 678) also note that appeals to middle-class members take on the form of good music rendered by a well-trained choir singing anthems and other classical religious works. They also describe the strategies used by some larger African American congregations to appeal to all class segments on the South Side of Chicago (Drake and Cayton 1962, 676):
Other features of a Sunday worship service other than the sermon have this dual class appeal. All of Bronzevilles churches have an adult or senior choir, and many have a junior choir. These present ordinary hymns and anthems. Some are highly trained choral groups. But, in addition to these choirs, most Bronzeville churches also have one or two gospel chorusesa concession to lower-class tastes. A gospel choir is not highly trained, but it is usually loud and spirited. [ ] Chorus members often shout while they sing. In many lower-class churches, there is no choir other than the gospel chorus.

Even more importantly, several of their interviews with South Side residents reveal that musical style is an important factor in sorting classes into different congregations. One middle-class respondent was indignant over the musical styles used in lower-class churches: I like good music, but I dont like the songs these gospel choirs in the storefronts singthese jazz tunes. I think it is heathen-like to jazz hymns (Drake and Cayton1962, 671). From the opposite side, a recent lowerclass migrant from the South told why she had decided to leave the larger, more middle-class congregation she had initially afliated with to join a small store-front church. After explaining that she sometimes couldnt understand the big words the preacher at her former church used, she added, I couldnt sing their way. The songs was proud-like. At my little church I enjoy the services (Drake and Cayton 1962, 634). LINGUISTIC STYLE A more central aspect of the worship service is its linguistic component. Prayers, testimonies and, of course, sermons or homilies come immediately to mind as primary linguistic elements in the ritual, but we should not forget the words to hymns and other religious songs, as

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well as greetings, announcements, instructions and other less sacred elements of the service. Bourdieu emphasizes that like art, music, and literature, language is closely tied to success in the formal educational system and a dominant, correct, way of speaking is often imposed upon the lower orders from above. Even amidst ordinary social occasions, the bourgeois linguistic style has a tendency toward abstraction, formalism, intellectualism and euphemistic moderation in contrast to the expressiveness or expressionism of working-class language, which manifests itself in the tendency to move from particular case to particular case, from illustration to parable (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977, 16, quoted in Swartz 1997, 199). In language, [we have] the opposition between popular outspokenness and the highly censored language of the bourgeois, between the expressionist pursuit of the picturesque or the rhetorical effect and the choice of restraint and false simplicity (Bourdieu 1984, 1767). This set of linguistic contrastsbetween the abstract and the concrete, the suggestive and the emphatic, the intellectually detached and the emotionally heartfeltshould be apparent in how different class churches express themselves in liturgical language. The ethnographic evidence on this point is intriguing. Consider the contrast between the middle and upper class emphasis on the ideational or intellectual content of discourse and the working and lower class emphasis on concrete and graphic depictions, often set in a gripping narrative. Hortense Powdermaker (1993, 241), in describing a sermon in a lower-class African American church in Indianola, Mississippi, in the early 1930s, wrote that the when the preacher talked about heaven, he describes [it] graphically in literal Bible terms: the golden streets, the pearly gates, the songs of angels. Liston Pope (1942, 86) compares the songs sung in the high status downtown churches of Gastonia, North Carolina, to the working-class mill churches and nds the latters music more concrete and more rhythmic; it conjures up pictures rather than describes attitudes or ideas. And Morland (1958, 121) also observing a working-class white congregation in South Carolina, was struck that many of the songs tell a story in ballad fashion, almost mountain style. Regarding their observations of African American worship services in Depression-era Chicago, Drake and Cayton (1962, 624) wrote that a sermon in a lower-class church: is primarily a vivid, pictorial, and imaginative recounting of Biblical lore. [ ] A good preacher is a good raconteur of religious tales. His highly embroidered individual variations are accepted as pleasing

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modications of an original story with which both the preacher and audience are familiar. John Dollard (1957, 232) who also studied Indianola, Mississippi, in the 1930s, gives the best example of this, recounting over several paragraphs the long, symbol-laden story the preacher gave during the sermon in a lower-class black church, each detail graphically described. Lower and working class linguistic style also relies more heavily on stock, repetitive phrases (taking the form of clichs in ordinary conversation) rather than on discourse which follows a more expository pattern, a contrast that has some resonance to Bernsteins distinction between elaborated and restricted codes (Bernstein 1975). This contrast has been remarked upon by many observers, who often seem unable to censor their own point of view as they comment on these church services. Dollard (1957, 242), for example, wrote of one working-class church he observed in Indianola, Mississippi, the preacher, of course, does not make such a connected discourse as would be expected by a better educated audience. He is allowed to repeat himself without fear of reproach and he utters frequent stereotyped phrases while he is collecting his thoughts. He describes a testimonial service, various of the members stood up and told how they had been saved, on what day, and how grateful they were. Each went through a little pattern, for the testimony is highly conventional, with many Amens and Thank Gods from other members (Dollard 1957, 235) Like others with higher levels of cultural capital, Pope (1942, 878) seems to interpret this linguistic style as an indication either of a lack of intellectual curiosity or of prowess:
Mill workers show no interest in theological questions as such; they simply accept notions coming from a wide variety of sources and weld them together without regard for consistency. The following statements, taken from testimonies made by them at services and from comments in private conversation, illustrate the ideas and phrases that recur when they attempt to describe their religious beliefs: Jesus saves, and the way grows sweeter. Im so glad my name is written in the Book of Life.I was a backslider once, but praise God Im back on the glory road now. [ ] Im glad I got the old-time religion and am on my way to glory land.

Interestingly, while Morland observed a similar pattern in his South Carolina churches, he took the opposite evaluative stance, judging the higher status church services from the standpoint of the more lower-class emphasis on emotional resonance and sincerity. Regarding his observations in the most educated congregation, he writes, the

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congregation sits apparently unmoved during sermons, which seem to be primarily a juggling of verbal symbols and an exercise in semantics without visibly touching those listening (Morland 1958, 115). The nal aspect to touch upon here is the contrast between a working-class folk culture based on oral tradition and middle-class literate culture based upon formal education. In the worship service this is translated into a working-class emphasis on spontaneous verbal performance (which often relies heavily on memorized stories, phrases, and images) and the middle-class reliance on more authoritative discourse (which often relies on more literary sources). James West (1964, 1545) who studied the community of Wheatland, Missouri, around 1940, observed (with undisguised bias) that sermons preached in the [higher status] Christian Church are usually prepared in advance and are coherent, but many revival sermons [in lower-status churches] are utterly incoherent. [ ] The words vary but are always rhythmic. Drake and Cayton (1962, 624) note this same pattern among African Americans on the South Side of Chicago, but evaluate it somewhat differently, in breaking the bread of life (a phrase referring to preaching), an uneducated minister has a distinct advantage over an educated preacher, for the typical lower-class sermon is an unprepared message. They note this same spontaneous approach to praying as well (Drake and Cayton 1962, 620):
Lower-class church people look with scorn upon book prayers, for praying is an art, and a person who can lead his fellows to the throne of grace with originality and eloquence gains high prestige. [ ] Though each person makes up his own prayer, there is a common stock of striking phrases and images which are combined and recombined throughout the Negro lower-class religious world.

PHYSICAL EXPRESSION The nal dimension I will examine is that of physical expressionthe use of the bodyin worship practices. This is a topic which certainly sparked the most comment from the authors of these community studies and the strongest feelings from their respondents as well, indicating that this dimension is probably the most potent one in separating the classes into different congregations. Bourdieu argues that the attitudes and dispositions of the individual toward their own bodies takes on a characteristic element of each class,

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which he analyzes in the realms of sports, in the selection of food and in the process of eating. For example, commenting on the middle-class emphasis on table manners, he exclaims (Bourdieu 1984, 196):
It is the expression of a habitus of order, restraint and propriety which may not be abdicated It is also a whole relationship to animal nature, to primary needs and the populace who indulge them without restraint; it is a way of denying the meaning and primary function of consumption, which are essentially common, by making the meal a social ceremony, and afrmation of ethical tone and aesthetic renement.

Similarly, each of the classes is predisposed toward particular kinds of sports based upon their unconscious views of the body and its relationship to the social self, a sport is in a sense predisposed for bourgeois use when the use of the body it requires in no way offends the sense of high dignity of the person, which rules out, for example, inging the body into the rough-and-tumble of forward-game rugby or the demeaning competitions of athletics (Bourdieu 1984, 219). On the whole, then, we might expect that middle class worship services would rst of all de-emphasize the physical in favor of the intellectual, and second, that any demands upon the body during worship will be in keeping with this sense of high dignity identied by Bourdieu. We might also expect that working and lower class worshippers would have a more instrumental relationship to their own bodies (as they are instruments of labor) and would use them for authentic expression of emotion and commitment with less concern for dignity and restraint. This is what every community study has found to be the case. I will give just a few examples to illustrate the point. In the extended quote below, Liston Pope (1942, 1302) gives a composite and impressionistic picture of the more active and emotional lower class groups:
The atmosphere is expectant and informal: members of the congregation move about at will, and talk in any tone of voice that suits their fancy. [ ] A band, including three stringed instruments and a saxophone, plays occasional music. [ ] The stanzas [of a hymn] are punctuated with loud shouts of Hallelujah, Thank you, Jesus, Glory, and the rhythmic clapping of hands and tapping of feet. Almost immediately, various members of the congregation begin to get the Holy Ghost. One young woman leaves the front row of the choir and jerks about the pulpit, with motions so disconnected as to seem involuntary, weird. A mans head trembles violently from side to side. [ ] Then comes a prayer, with everybody kneeling on the oor and praying aloud at the same time, each in his own way. Some mutter with occasional shouts; others chant, with

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frequent bendings backward and forward; the volume of sound rises and falls, without unied pattern or group consternation. [ ] The preacher begins a sermon; more precisely, he enunciates verbal symbols that arouse immediate response from the congregation. [ ] Then there is a testimony meeting in which a large number of the more faithful testify to their personal experience and joy in religion, some mutteringly, some loudly, fervidly. [ ] The man who had been indulging in the intoxicated laugh defends his right to laugh in church, saying that his religion makes him feel good all over and is not like the stiff coldness of the Methodist church.

Hortense Powdermaker (1993, 244), describing a lower-class rural congregation, writes, [the preacher] waves his arms, he chants, he shrieks, he tells jokes. His congregation responds with vigor, laughing, continually breaking into Amens, keeping time with their feet. In contrast, the higher status congregations are always characterized by their relative lack of movement and restrained behavior. Morland (1964, 113) also noted that during the service at the higher status Baptist church in York, South Carolina, the congregation remains seated, no one kneeling or saying Amen during the prayer. Dollard (1957, 2467) too observed that among the African American churches in Indianola, Mississippi, The middle-class churches in town are much more reserved and have much more the frozen, restrained characteristics of the white churches. Hylan Lewis (1955, 138) notes that the highest status African American congregation in York, South Carolina, was the only one of the three churches where the active emotional display known as shouting does not occur. Encouragement for the minister is meager and restrained. The members tend to be proud of their restrained patterns and particular denominational afliation; with reference to some of the practices of the other churches, members have been heard to say, We just dont do things that way. Later, Lewis comments on the range of worship practices in this community, and note how closely his words echo those of Bourdieu, the quality of the expression ranges from the most passive and perfunctory to the highly active and emotionalThe restrained behavior of the more sophisticated is in keeping with their conceptions of themselves and their emotional demands. Similarly, the active, emotional behavior of older, less sophisticated, and marginal persons has meaning in terms of their traditions, statuses, and needs (Lewis1955, 153). Like Lewis, most of the authors of these community studies explicitly associate the social status of local congregations to the extent of physical display in their worship services. Powdermaker (1993, 234)

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notes that in Indianola, the Methodists and the Baptists look down upon the sanctied, considering their noise and dancing somewhat heathenish. Gallaher, in his mid-1950s re-study of the same community James West had studied a decade and a half earlier, writes that, the Holiness group, like certain Baptist and Methodist families, ranks low in prestige because of its emotional type of worship. Although the behavior exhibited in these services is so distasteful to some middle class members of the community that it [connotes] mental instability, they can tolerate it as long as they worship in their own congregations. As one man told Gallaher, you have to have a church for people like that that kind dont t in regular churches (Gallaher 1961, 215). Such comments by community members were far from rare. Consider some of the opinions elicited by Drake and Cayton from middle-class African Americans in Chicago. One person stated, I dont believe in shouting and never did. I like a church that is quiet. I just cant appreciate clowning in church (Drake and Cayton 1962, 671). Another respondent was even more emphatic, rst characterizing store front churches as encouraging jumping-jack religion, then declaring, I think those people are in the rst stages of insanity (Drake and Cayton 1962, 671). Perhaps the most vitriolic statements were collected among African Americans in Natchez, Mississippi, in the early 1930s by Allison Davis and her colleagues (1941, 232), upon occasion, upper-class [African-Americans] spoke their thoughts about the lower class with equal frankness. [ ] Church members who disliked revivalistic ritual spoke of the members of lower-class churches as being ignorant as hogs, wallowing in superstition, just like African savages, or simply black and dumb. From the other end of the spectrum, lower-class church members often characterized the worship services of the higher status churches as being stiff and cold. James West reports that in Wheatland, Missouri, [Holiness people] consider worship in the Christian Church as too cold to properly be called religion. The same criticism of the Christian Church as cold and worldly is offered by Baptists and Methodists, who poke fun, however, with the rest of the community, at the ignorant goings-on of Holiness meetings (West 1964, 143). Morland (1958, 107) observed this same continuum in York noting that, The Wesleyans attracted people who desired Holiness doctrine but felt that the Church of God was too undignied, and who, at the same time, did not like the coldness of the Cromwell Baptist Church.

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As these quotes make clear, preferences over worship styles were not just matters of opinion but actively worked to sort different classes into separate congregations. The account of one young man interviewed by Drake and Cayton (1962, 538) offers a clear example of this, and is also important for the way it illustrates the variation that can be found across local religious ecologies:
When I rst came to Chicago I was a member of the Baptist Church. But I never joined a church here because I did not like the way people exhibited their emotions. At home, in the church I belonged to, people were very quiet; but here in the Baptist churches I found people rather noisy. For that reason I tried to nd a church that was different, and in visiting the various churches I came across the Presbyterian Church, which I joined. I have remained a member ever since.

CONCLUSION Several decades before Bourdieu developed his theory of social reproduction through class habitus, Art Gallaher summed up his study of the churches in Wheatland, Missouri, this way, the signicance of religion, then, as a criterion for social status, lies mainly in the behavior of the individual in his worshipping (Gallaher 1961, 215). As we have seen, this observation was overwhelmingly corroborated by every one of the 15 community studies under consideration here. Although the evidence was more abundant about the role of physical expression (particularly the activities of shouting, speaking in tongues and vigorous congregational response) and linguistic patterns in sorting different class groupings into different congregations, there was some support for the role of purely aesthetic considerations as well. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Author query AU 1: Please check and correct the year ranges. AU 2: Please check and update the ref. connolly.

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