It wasn’t easy for Cecilia and Manuel to get to church on Sunday morning. They took whatever shifts were available at Walmart, working as long and as often as the manager allowed. The city bus appeared, if at all, once an hour outside the hulking box store, making a timely arrival anywhere nearly impossible. Ryan and Tom were in the same boat. Money was tight, and even though they worked 40 hours a week, both adult men lived with their parents to make ends meet. A vet tech and a butcher, when shifts came open, they would take them.
I thought of my former church members’ economically driven attendance when Ryan Burge assessed the data on church membership in relation to class and declared that “religion has become a luxury good.” The religious demographer’s research found that churches are increasingly the habitat of the more educated and wealthy in our society. The people most likely to attend Christian worship have a master’s degree and earn a salary between $60k and $100k. Those least likely to attend worship, who ticked the religious box “nothing,” hold a high school diploma.
Burge’s assessment is stark. Our churches are increasingly designed by and for those who have done everything right according to the White, middle-class script: college degree, marriage, stable income.
