From "How Religious Faith Can Shape Success in School" (NYT).
The article is by Ilana M. Horwitz, "an assistant professor of Jewish studies and sociology at Tulane University and the author of 'God, Grades, and Graduation.'" Focusing on Christian denominations , she "followed the lives of 3,290 teenagers from 2003 to 2012 using survey and interview data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, and then linking those data to the National Student Clearinghouse in 2016."
Talking to NYT readers — the highly educated, professional/managerial people — Horwitz seems to be saying: Don't be so dismissive of religion, because it may be the best substitute for the privilege that benefits you. Religion is practical. Not for you, of course, because you don't have the need. But for the others.
Doesn't that sound more elitist than looking down on religion?
Speaking of wanting to do things that work, it's not practical to disparage religious people... at least when the cameras are running.
ADDED: You may sacrifice educational and career opportunities if you prioritize parenthood, altruism, and service to God, but you may sacrifice parenthood, altruism, and service to God, if you prioritize educational and career opportunities.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
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I've never seen anything more religion-like than the superficially secular TED and TEDx talks.
Everyone in the world has an itch for an integrated, comprehensive Theory of Everything with Firm Answers. Religions have offered many sets of universal answers, and even the aggressive atheist Richard Dawkins reveals his own dogmatic theory of everything in being so aggressive toward non-atheists.
Demanding factual accuracy, let alone perfection, from religion will doom one to failure.
Demanding the eradication of religion will first doom one failure because political ideologies quickly become religions in the absence of "answers for everything." Eradication of the supernatural then forces reinvention of the wheel --- Wokeness reflects the spontaneous birth of a primitive can't-kill-it-shower-fungus-like religion itself. This stands in contrast to the hundreds and thousands of years of rational and pragmatic moderation that led to the sustainability of the world's established religions (along with periods of horror).
Bend don't break.
you may sacrifice parenthood, altruism, and service to God, if you prioritize educational and career opportunities.
Shhhh, you're not supposed to talk about that, lest you be mistaken for some alt-right nutjob. Only those heretics would dare point out that the modern push for more education and obsession with career advancement has costs, especially for young women.
.
...they are less likely to consider a selective college as they prioritize life goals such as parenthood, altruism and service to God rather than a prestigious career.
Speaking straight to the status anxiety of NYT readers. Can you imagine the pain those parents must suffer when Becky chooses to have children and volunteer at her church soup kitchen rather than attend Wellesley and start an NGO empowering poor African transgendered wymin to demand preferred pronouns.
Too bad the NYT didn't allow comments on this one. Would have been interesting to see elite response.
"But one can agree with the liberal critique of conservatism’s moral and political goals while still acknowledging that religion orders the lives of millions of Americans — and that it might offer social benefits...."
Gee, thank you so much, lady. One can certainly do that. One can also acknowledge the hollow emptiness of many liberals who hold religion in disdain. And one can also learn through experience that religious people are usually a lot more fun to be around than liberals with chips on their shoulder who care so much about society, but have disdain and contempt for the people around them.
One can also recognize that a good education will often include people such as Bach and Handel; da Vinci and Michelangelo; Tolstoy and Dostoevsky; Dante and Milton; Tolkein and Lewis; Mendel and Lavoisier; Newton and Pascal; and a few other religious people who created the modern world.
But despite her elitism and condescension, I'll give this woman credit for confirming through her study that not all religious people are drooling hillbillies. Some go on to get an education.
There is only one approved appropriate way to live your life and think your thoughts.
Here is this week's version.
Stay tuned to this space for next week's version.
Doesn't that sound more elitist than looking down on religion?
Why yes it does, Professor.
If the study solely followed Christians, perhaps the conclusions (and headline) should be limited to how Christianity can shape success in school. Then do Islam.
When [the] elites criticize religion, they often do so on the grounds that faith (in their eyes) is irrational and not evidence-based.
No shit. That is exactly why it is called "faith"
Also, professor of Hebrew studies and (guessing) jew, why did you study only Christians? Doesn't this apply to Jess also?
John LGBTQBNY Henry
professional-class parents... being religious.
just How and What religious ARE these 'professional class' parents? Unitarians?
working-class families, regardless of race, who were regularly involved in their church and strongly believed in God
And How and What are these 'working-class' parents? Baptists? Whatever they are,
I'll bet the REAL difference is: and strongly believe in God
Church isn't a building.. It's Belief
We struggled financially to send all 4of our kids to private schools 1-8. Trying to stay the wolves of cultural rot at the door until all our children had grown up enough to at least weigh their differences and be able to make informed decisions. A place where they could proclaim God is Good, know a rosary isn’t an accessory and kneel in prayer to G*d.
You know- things not allowed in a public state/federal school.
We’ve planted seeds of life and hope. You can be sure that this world and all its evil spirits will do their damndest to uproot the fragility of those tender shoots…
I remember hearing that the "college" in New Jersey with the highest percentage of students passing the CPA exam was Lakewood Yeshiva.
"Constrain" as used here is simply a dismissal of differing value judgments. The sacrifices required by a prestigious career are just as constraining.
I’d like to add: sometimes the quotations Althouse uses don’t seem to fit as well as “I” think they should.
This time, the hand and glove fit is as close as skin.
Pew Research Center has some interesting stats on this topic. It’s clear from those charts that there are large numbers of socio-economic elites among the religious in the United States, but that those religious elites don’t share quite the same level of religiousness as religious non-elites.
NYT does Strauss via Hurwitz. Of course it’s elitist but it’s actual elitism as opposed to the fake bullshit they usually sling.
@Andrew at 0658-
Blindingly obvious that your list of folks who created the modern world trends dead white guys.
Even a couple of Ruskies in there.
Surely you will want to recant.
If you drill down into the politics of it, you find that the religious right has many graduate of elite universities among its most prominent leaders.
Liberal, managerial elites may denigrate religion, but their worship includes the belief systems of Diversity and Climate Change. There are few demands for factual accuracy among the believers; these are faith-based systems requiring uncritical acceptance of most of the tenets of the creeds. Indeed, like the fundamentalists they are, true believers want apostates and infidels to face the weight of the law.
I find it interesting that a professor of Jewish studies had to follow Christian to do this study.
Oh I believe that it was necessary, because the current state of modern American Judaism is so pathetic, and outside of the Orthodox community has become a little more than another adjunct to the Democrat party, just like organizations such as the ACLU and the ABA. Today’s hyper-liberal synagogues offer very little in terms of the structure or the motivation needed for young people to succeed.
When [the] elites criticize religion, they often do so on the grounds that faith (in their eyes) is irrational and not evidence-based
That's because the elites like to take strong positions on things they know nothing about. Belief in the existence of God may not be evidence-based, but the benefits of religious belief are.
In terms of who is in the professional class, one has to include religious ministers. Despite the joke about prostitution, I would say that ministering is the oldest profession.
This makes perfect sense. There's no shame in cripples using crutches to help them get along.
rather than a prestigious career
I don't know of anybody with a prestigious career. It's a fiction believed by people who don't actually like their work. If only it was prestigious, they think. Then it would be worthwhile.
I've always been a big fan of Thomas More. He put his money where his mouth was.
Sunday school was a complete waste except for teaching what the cultural stories are, which is not nothing. You can use them at some point. The part about throwing out the money changers was good. Take it as a recommendation. It applies everywhere.
Last Saturday we went to see "The Worst Person in the World," a Norwegian film about a 30ish woman who is in an identity crisis that is fundamentally an existential crisis. Intelligent, beautiful, and well-educated, she drifts from occupation to occupation, working at a bookstore while going nowhere in her chosen field of photography (after having dropped out of medicine and psychology). She has abandoned her edgy, older lover for a younger man who "will still being a waiter at a coffee bar when he is 50." Her abandoned lover gets pancreatic cancer and is doomed. She has to confront eternity through his thoughts as he fades out of this world.
The film is nicely done and beautifully filmed, although melancholy in mood. By the end, I was overwhelmed by the emptiness of her life. Why? She had no mooring in any transcendent view of life and eternity. She was spiritually empty. It made me reflect on my own life and the spiritual values implanted early through my family's church life. I'll always be grateful for that.
they are less likely to consider a selective college as they prioritize life goals such as parenthood, altruism and service to God rather than a prestigious career
And the author writes that as if it's a bad thing.
Control your children and Push them into a prestigious career. (It's for their own good!)
Thirty-three years of public school teaching (high school, English) clearly revealed to me the huge advantage religious kids had over the nons. They were more goal-oriented, more verbally articulate, more socially-adept, and much more likely to go to college. I taught in a fairly diverse religious/non-religious setting with the full spectrum of religious/non expressions intermingled. I would note that the liberal, college-educated non-religious caste did well in perpetuating academic aspirations but in actual reasoning skills, the more blue collar religious kids were stronger, often strikingly so.
I began to notice the correlation between faith and academic success about ten years into my career and saw it more and more so as the years went by. It is real, though I fear in the ten years since I left the religious quotient is dropping.
"teenage boys from working-class families, regardless of race, who were regularly involved in their church and strongly believed in God were twice as likely to earn bachelor’s degrees as moderately religious or nonreligious boys"
Wait, faith and order benefit boys more? Like, boys and girls are different?
"Religion is practical. Not for you, of course, because you don't have the need. But for the others. Doesn't that sound more elitist than looking down on religion?"
Not really, if it reflects the data. The upper class maintains structure and has its own faith. See Charles Murray, Coming Apart.
"You may sacrifice educational and career opportunities if you prioritize parenthood, altruism, and service to God, but you may sacrifice parenthood, altruism, and service to God, if you prioritize educational and career opportunities."
But how much sacrifice is involved if the alternatives are not part of one's preferences to begin with?
"When [the] elites criticize religion, they often do so on the grounds that faith (in their eyes) is irrational and not evidence-based."
Now do elite opinions on transgenderism.
Bonus question: Is the forcing of Progressive transgenderism as an ideology due to the Marxist materialism of the progressive project, or the neo-gnostic trans belief in a spiritual or immaterial self that is separate and superior to the physical self?
Or are the materialists just using the neo-gnostics and they are actually two different groups?
There are no more religious people in America today than our secular statists. No one carries more dogma, heaves more slander and firebombs at 'apostates', or demands more submission than our secular statists. They would have made the old Popes blush.
Though clearly more religious in their feverish beliefs, they are also clearly less spiritual than conventional religious people. Unless you consider fainting at the sound of Barack Obama's voice spiritual.
High Priests of our secular statist class can not understand anyone with a traditional religious background or belief system which goes hand in hand with more traditional cultural ways of living, raising a family, working within a community. It's always struck me funny how the 'more enlightened' among us struggle to find the meaning in their existence, while the rest of us live. It's also always struck me as funny how the 'enlightened' secular statists always talk about how we have to act for the community when their every action shows how much they clearly hate their community.
I guess all those girls Catholic Prep Schools around the country do not know their grads may choose family over the rigorous education they are providing...
Oh Wait, they assume those girls will do both.
They much prefer that you channel your faith impulses toward the 'known' - their political and social ideologies - than the 'unknown', the religious and spiritual realm.
And what a coincidence! It just so happens they know all about how the political and social realms work, and know exactly what they need to flourish. They can be your go-to source for sage advice.
What a shallow and unrewarding existence that would be. No faith means no trust, and no trust means no love. Explains a lot about the kind of blind, reactionary hatred we see surfacing so often.
"Them versus Us" talk runs the risk of being patronizing, especially when the "Us" is assumed to be higher or better than the "them," but no, it's not more elitist to recognize that that "They" may need religion as a substitute for the drives and values that "We" have than it is to simply dismiss or disparage religious faith. Elitism is baked into "Them versus Us" talk and isn't increased when we look at mitigating details in what is bound to be patronizing way.
The "professional class": are ministers a part of it? Some are. Some aren't. Even among lawyers, the ambulance chasers who went to bottom of the barrel law schools and advertise on television are looked at askance by the rest of the class. Some ministers obviously aren't professional class high fliers, and even when others in the clergy could pass the test they may be aware of a gap separating them from highly paid doctors and lawyers. Fortunately, they can join together in supporting political causes and looking down on other social classes, so it's not that big a problem.
Prestige careers: Do people enjoy them? They enjoy the money and status, the sense of belonging to a privileged class and the access to dinner parties where they feel that they have finally "arrived."
My wife is on the search committee for a new preaching minister for our church. This past weekend, we interviewed a very impressive young man who grew up in a poor neighborhood in St. Louis, raised by a single mother and abandoned by his own father and then step-father. His mother was involved with a church though.
Through the love and encouragement of his church, he went to college and decided to go into the ministry. He has now earned his bachelor's and master's degrees, and will defend his PhD dissertation this next January. His wife, who is from a similar cultural and ethnic background, has her Master's degree. They both credited the support from their Christian community for their educational achievements.
"In this house we believe that:
1. Science is real..."*
* Except for that part about Y chromosomes having anything to do with determining male or female identity, which is all just a social construct, except if a 10 year old decides she is really male, in which case his identity is male and always has been from birth.
The current state religion is climate panic. Be a believer or be cancelled.
No heretics allowed.
Twice blessed by the NYT today, first Putin, now religion. I don't dumpster dip past the pay wall, but past experience with NYT commenters buttresses the conclusion that they have a secular religion of their own, sort of a combination of megalomania and Marxism.
The sound worldview and familial connections encouraged by Christianity, while difficult to maintain in a demonic environment, encourages young people toward a sanctified life honoring God, not self.
As someone who was raised in a working class/middle class religious family and is now a professional religious adult:
My takeaway is that (as we likely could have guessed), class reproduction is fairly ingrained in the professional class, with or without religion.
But for the working and middle class, religion can be an aid in upward mobility. I'm reluctant to attribute that to faith itself (it sounds way too Joel Osteen prosperity gospel for me). But as some commenters have suggested, it's another layer of structure and stability, and given the economic (though not racial) diversity of many churches, another form of networking. Prior to attending law school, I'd known a grand total of one l lawyer--and it was the parent of someone my age I knew from curch. I'm not saying that was essential, but it was nice to have someone to call from time to time.
Re: Added - We have tried to "have it both ways" or "balance the many worthy values," depending on one's perspective. I think it can be done, but all require a certain amount of fanaticism to get it right, whether parenthood, career, knowledge, altruism, piety, or education. It's hard to be fanatic in many directions without creating some destruction to living the others. I look around me and see mostly people who ended up with a gap somewhere. I think "career" is the one that will take the most time from the others, if allowed to run the show. Slapdash parenting has been the human norm for thousands of years, after all, and somehow it keeps working.
The secular project is doomed to failure in spectacular ways. The Western world was built on faith and reason. The seculars live in a world created by the faithful and are tearing it apart but not replacing it with anything substantial or even helpful. How many of the professional class were raised by faithful parents, yet the children rejected the ways of their parents in the fruitless pursuit of happiness in material things or other “spiritual” beliefs? When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” (G. K. Chesterton)
None of the worst features of the modern world, from income inequality to racism to lack of community, are taught or embraced by the truly faithful. But they are supported by the unfaithful. And faith is a problem?
Among Christians the Sacramental religious communities spoon feed grace to babies. The Scripture expositor religious communities build strong adults that know what they believe and who they are in God’s eyes freeing the the Protestant work ethic that makes them into a success in life.
The NYT: The Clueless are Kings in the Land of Willful Ignorance.
I understand that there may even be one or two people who display "FOR GOD, FOR COUNTRY AND FOR YALE" banners on campus without irony.
I'm sure there is an administration task force working to resolve the problem, and I don't mean the problem of the missing Oxford comma.
The professor has an interesting background. Born in atheistic, communist USSR. Ethnic Jew, emigrated and became practicing Jew in Jewish communities. Encountered Christian families
as sociology graduate student in Palo Alto, which influenced her academic study. Based her research and book on US study over time out of Notre Dame. Since working with statistics, the only statistically significant group was Christians. OUP chose to put "surprising" in subtitle of her book on religion and education (and class). This guest article in NYT follows January publication of her book, which was favorably reviewed in WSJ.
She is a sociologist and is looking at connections between religious practice, education and class. That's the kind of thing sociologists do.
@West TX Intermediate Crude,
I was aware of that, and troubled. After posting my comment, I spent some time in penance.
But then I had an epiphany, that my list of names is an example of "white diversity."
Bach - German
Handel - German-British (VERY discriminated against)
da Vinci - Italian
Michelangelo - Italian (damn, sorry)
Tolstoy - Russian
Dostoevsky - Russian (but probably from a different part of Russia, 'cause it's a big country)
Dante - Italian (dammit!)
Milton - English
Tolkein and Lewis - we'll skip them
Mendel - Um, Moravian, or Austrian, or Czech
Lavoisier - French!
Newton - How about, British?
Pascal - Unknown
So if that ain't diversity, I don't know what is.
Well, there is the whole not-going-to-Hell-after-you-die thing.
What do you suppose Barkie clings to? His two sea-level mansions, and his certainty that the seas really did stop rising in 2008? It's good to have faith in yourself.
The Pro-Choice "ethical" religion, diversity [dogma] (e.g. racism), denies women and men's dignity and agency, and reduces human life to negotiable commodities. Keep women appointed, available, and taxable, men who take a knee and beg, and the "burdens" few and far between for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes.
Faith is a logical domain (e.g. "trust"). Religion: morality in a universal frame, its relativistic sibling "ethics", and its politically congruent cousin "law", is a behavioral protocol. An ideology realizes them. Libertarianism is independent. Liberalism is divergent. Conservativism is moderating. Progressivism is monotonic. Feminism/masculinism is chauvinistic. Political congruence ("=") is exclusive. Diversity is a dogmatic belief in color judgments and class-based bigotry, color blocs (e.g. "people of color"), color quotas (e.g. "Jew privilege"), and affirmative discrimination. One-child/selective-child is a wicked solution for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes.
My secular preferences and elitist attitudes are homegrown--a self-made Menckenite in Memphis who studied no-prestige topics at no-prestige institutions and held no-prestige academic positions.
My parents' families would have been considered elite to the extent that some college and/or white collar livelihoods marked American elites in the 20th C, but none of them had recognizably elite tastes or attitudes in anything (with the exception of Opa from Hamburg).
For my brothers and me, college was pretty much fore-ordained, as was the fact that we wouldn't be going anywhere impressive if we went at all. Three of us four did, but none of us were religious by college time and none became so afterwards. Ma couldn't understand why none of us wanted to be a doctor, or at least a lawyer . . . it's not as if there weren't plenty of both to set examples at our Wesleyan outlet, which I learned much later was pretty much the university's own.
As for gaining the world and losing my soul, I never thought the first was possible, which made the second irrelevant in the matter.
>>I've always been a big fan of Thomas More
"But for Wales, Rich?"
--gpm
The article is by Ilana M. Horwitz, "an assistant professor of Jewish studies and sociology at Tulane University and the author of 'God, Grades, and Graduation.'" Focusing on Christian denominations
Why is a professor of "Jewish studies" studying Christians?
Talking to NYT readers — the highly educated, professional/managerial people — Horwitz seems to be saying: Don't be so dismissive of religion, because it may be the best substitute for the privilege that benefits you. Religion is practical. Not for you, of course, because you don't have the need. But for the others.
Doesn't that sound more elitist than looking down on religion?
It sounds for 1800s. "Oh, yeah, we elite don't have to believe in god, but we want to pretend to believe, because 'the masses' need that belief."
The more things change....
ADDED: You may sacrifice educational and career opportunities if you prioritize parenthood, altruism, and service to God, but you may sacrifice parenthood, altruism, and service to God, if you prioritize educational and career opportunities.
Yep. I do find it funny how many people who claim to believe in evolution end up having less than a replacement number of kids.
Our culture encourages girls to go in for professional careers and discourages boys from doing the same. Religious faith can divert girls from that "upward" path and boys from the "downward" path that the culture has mapped out for them.
Faith gives girls something other than status and material success to aspire to and gives boys something other than immediate gratification of their baser instincts to strive for.
In a different culture with different expectations for young people the results of faith on gender could be different. In a culture that valued male self-assertion and female submission, religion might divert men from high pressure careers and give women a way to escape from traditional expectations.
That little quote at the end of the post was used to introduce the Penthouse movie, Caligula, thus adding requisite social significance to an otherwise really vile porn movie. With that biblical quote up front, the movie legally became art, not just porn, in many states at the time of its release and could be shown in theaters, despite an X rating, not just in XXX movie houses. I reviewed the movie, in its R-rated bowlderized cut, for my college newspaper when it came through town. I concluded it would have been more watchable with more sex scenes.
Religion, you ask? Religion can be used as a towel for covering the naughty bits of life.
One of the things my mother left was this statement: "You must learn what is meant by " 'there is a knife so sharp that it separates soul and spirit.' " I've never got the answer for sure though I've asked people about it, but for a long time I've believed she meant that it isn't enough to recognize the moral or ethical benefits of the religion you were raised in (spirit); you must actually believe in God (soul) to be able to apply these general rules correctly in practice. And it isn't enough to "believe" in the sense that you throw your belief down deep in a well to keep it safe and never apply it. In other words, without active belief in God the way in which a generation applied moral precepts, a practical matter, becomes a rigid orthodoxy for the next generation or even for a person themselves in later life. An example is Nancy Pelosi who is rigidly applying the Italian immigrant Catholic believer's way of life to our present situation. This works out to "the Democratic party right or wrong" and thus to support for abortion and then on to the destruction of San Francisco. Her father, mayor of Baltimore, would be appalled but I'm pretty sure she thinks she's in continuity with him and his community (spirit) but she's lost the ability to reapply the true connection (soul). Sociology can discuss institutions and their structure but it cannot analyze their truth or the impact of a person believing or not believing "this is true." Our nature is so constructed that belief or disbelief in "true" or "not true" is central to the actual outcome of lives and our society even as measured by sociology.
"This is the last and greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason." Luckily there's none of that "doing the right deed" in the US at present, not for any reason.
gpm 4:42 - God bless Robert Bolt.
wildswan said...
"This is the last and greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason." Luckily there's none of that "doing the right deed" in the US at present, not for any reason.
Supporting Ukraine against Putin's invasion is the right deed
Opposing the Left's cancel culture, CRT, and gay / trans grooming agendas are all the right deeds
just for some easy examples
The similarity of reaction my liberal friends had to my daughter joining the ROTC, and my acquiescence, was appalling and amusing. Even being reminded that as a foreign-born brownie it was surprising and illogical.
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