The Successes of Secret Evangelicals and "Quasi-religious" Catholics

Our local paper today reprints, side by side, two fascinating op ed pieces from national papers.  One is Hanna Rosin's piece from the Washington Post "A New Evangelical Establishment", which has a strong tone of warning about the phalanx of accomplished young Evangelicals -- overwhelmingly politically conservative -- positioned to take over our government.  An excerpt:

A 1996 study found that evangelical college students were remarkably unified in their political identification: More than two-thirds called themselves Republicans, and only 9 percent said they were Democrats. At Patrick Henry, I heard a rumor that someone had voted for John Kerry. I chased down many leads. All dead ends. If it was true, no one would publicly admit it.

While testifying this week, Goodling admitted that she had asked inappropriately partisan questions of applicants for civil service jobs. But she never asked about religion, she said. Unlike their elders, the new generation of evangelicals does not turn the cubicle into a pulpit. If they are intent on implementing God's will, they do it with professional discretion.

It took the conservative political movement 30 years to become a fixture in American politics, and it's taken evangelicals about the same. Like conservatives, evangelicals may remain chronically ambivalent, afflicted with a persecution complex despite their obvious successes. But they are embedded firmly enough into Washington to provide jobs for smart young Christians for generations to come.

The other is a David Brooks column appearing in the New York Times on May 25, "The Catholic Boom".  (I can't get it on line at the Star Tribune site and you have to be a TimesSelect subcriber to pull up on the NYT site.  UPDATE:  Faculty & students can sign up for TimesSelect for free at:  http://www.nytimes.com/gst/ts_university_email_verify.html)   The Brooks column explores an article by a Duke sociologist, Lisa Keister, "Upward Wealth Mobility:  Exploring the Roman Catholic Advantage."  Here's the abstract of Keister's article:

Wealth inequality is among the most extreme forms of stratification in the United States, and upward wealth mobility is not common. Yet mobility is possible, and this paper takes advantage of trends among a unique group to explore the processes that generate mobility. I show that non-Hispanic whites raised in Roman Catholic families have been upwardly mobile in the wealth distribution in recent decades, and I find that unique fertility, marriage and education patterns contributed to this change. I also show that Catholic values related to work and money contributed to relatively high saving and portfolio behavior that facilitated mobility. The results provide important insight into the process by which childhood experiences shape adult well-being, particularly adult wealth ownership.

I haven't read all of Keister's article but what Brooks seems to add to Keister's empirical analysis of the data is the judgment that the economic success of these upwardly-mobile young Catholics is related to their shift from being "thoroughly religious" to being "quasi-religious."  He defines the "quasi-religious" as people who "attend services, but they're bored much of the time.  They read the Bible, but find large parts of it odd and irrelevant.  They find themselves inextricably bound to their faith, but think some of the peole who define it are nuts."

Here's how he characterizes the "quasi-religious" young, upwardly mobile Catholics:

On the one hand, modern Catholics have retained many of the traditional patterns of their ancestors -- high marriage rates, high family stability rates, low divorce rates.  Catholic investors save a lot and favor low-risk investment portfolios.  On the other hand, they have also become more individualistic, more future-oriented and less bound by neighborhood and extended family.  They are now much better educated than their parents or grandparents, and much better educated than their family histories would lead you to predict.

That's all demographic-type description that I imagine is documented by the Keister study.  But Brook then adds his thesis on the "quasi-religious" nature of these Catholics:

...if you really wanted to supercharge the nation, you'd fill it with college students who constantly attend church, but who are skeptical of everything they hear there.  For there are at least two things we know about flourishing in a modern society.

First, college students who attend religious services regularly do better than those that don't. . . . Second, students who come from denominations that encourage dissent are more successful, on average, than students from denominations that don't.

This embodies the social gospel annex to the quasi-religous creed:  Always try to be the least believing member of one of the more observant sects.  Participate in organized religious, but be a friendly dissident inside.  Ensconce yourself in traditional moral practice, but champion piecemeal modernization.  Submit to the wisdom of the ages, but with one eye open.

So what are we to make of these two observations?  Conservative Evangelicals are suceeding by hiding their religious views?  Catholics are succeeding by retaining their faith, but substituting boredom and skepticism for religious fervor?  Interesting set of opinions to read side by side.....