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ABSTRACT
The relationship between social status and religiosity could be illuminating in the explanation of religiosity. This has been suggested by numerous sociologically minded authors. Although not consistent across all national samples, findings from the current study, based on World Values Survey data (1999–2001), did indicate the predominance of a moderate but positive association between low social status and high religiosity among European countries with a Christian heritage. Consequently, the results lent limited support to the classical deprivation thesis, since in none of the samples analyzed could a positive association between high social status and high religiosity could be found.
Notes
1. On the other hand, it could be argued that actions speak louder than words, and that claiming God's importance to your life is too easy. Nevertheless, we (also for the sake of space) decided not to deal with the issues of centrality and dimensionality that appear in the context of religiosity (see, e.g., Allport and Ross Citation1967; Batson and Schoenrade Citation1991a, Citationb; Hill and Hood Citation1999), although we do acknowledge that such attempts could prove fruitful when analysing the relationship between social status and religiosity.
2. It is important to note that other explanations in this context could and should be offered and studied. For instance, the diminution in the relevance of religiosity, along with education, could also be studied in relation to cynical views resulting from education, in relation to specific pressures at school, possibly coming from teachers and peers, and to the fact that non-theistic religiosity, possibly New Age, also plays a role (Heelas et al. 1988).