{"id":171,"date":"2011-02-15T17:04:24","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T17:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-new-class-hearts-religion.html"},"modified":"2011-02-15T17:04:24","modified_gmt":"2011-02-15T17:04:24","slug":"the-new-class-hearts-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-new-class-hearts-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"The New Class hearts religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the sovereign beliefs of the culture warriors of the right is<br \/>\nthat the problem with America is that it is in the grip of over-educated<br \/>\nelites who don&#8217;t uphold the traditional values of God and country.<br \/>\nEspecially God. And one of the sovereign beliefs of the culture warriors<br \/>\nof the left is that the problem with America is that it is in the grip<br \/>\nof under-educated yahoos who, er, cling to their guns and Bibles.<br \/>\nEspecially their Bibles.<\/p>\n<p>Well, actually, no. Thanks to my colleague Barry Kosmin&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org\/2011\/02\/religion_and_the_intelligentsia_post-graduate_educated_americans_1990-2008.html\">ongoing analysis<\/a><br \/>\nof the 2008 Trinity ARIS data, it turns out that America&#8217;s<br \/>\nover-educated elites are just about as likely to believe in God and<br \/>\ncling to their Bibles as the rest of their fellow citizens. Those New<br \/>\nClass types that neocons and their paleocon readers love to excoriate are just<br \/>\na couple of percentage points more likely to say they have no religion<br \/>\nthan the population at large&#8211;and a lot more likely to belong to a<br \/>\nreligious congregation and to participate in religious life-cycle<br \/>\nevents. <\/p>\n<p>Now, the criterion for elite membership is achieving a degree higher<br \/>\nthan a B.A. And no doubt, the elite that the right has in mind is the<br \/>\nprofessoriat&#8211;pointy headed atheists who spend all their time teaching<br \/>\nundergraduates advanced thinking that the undergraduates promptly go on<br \/>\nto forget. Be that as it may, it&#8217;s time for all of us to stop thinking<br \/>\nabout higher education as a barricade in the culture wars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the sovereign beliefs of the culture warriors of the right is that the problem with America is that it is in the grip of over-educated elites who don&#8217;t uphold the traditional values of God and country. Especially God. And one of the sovereign beliefs of the culture warriors of the left is that&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The New Class hearts religion - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-new-class-hearts-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The New Class hearts religion - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of the sovereign beliefs of the culture warriors of the right is that the problem with America is that it is in the grip of over-educated elites who don&#8217;t uphold the traditional values of God and country. Especially God. And one of the sovereign beliefs of the culture warriors of the left is that&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-new-class-hearts-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-02-15T17:04:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The New Class hearts religion - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-new-class-hearts-religion.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The New Class hearts religion - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"One of the sovereign beliefs of the culture warriors of the right is that the problem with America is that it is in the grip of over-educated elites who don&#8217;t uphold the traditional values of God and country. Especially God. And one of the sovereign beliefs of the culture warriors of the left is that&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-new-class-hearts-religion.html","og_site_name":"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2011-02-15T17:04:24+00:00","author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-new-class-hearts-religion.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-new-class-hearts-religion.html","name":"The New Class hearts religion - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-02-15T17:04:24+00:00","dateModified":"2011-02-15T17:04:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-new-class-hearts-religion.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-new-class-hearts-religion.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-new-class-hearts-religion.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The New Class hearts religion"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}