***** The re-emergence of a Christian right in the mid-80's took no one by greater surprise than the liberal academics and journalists who were frequently called upon to account for itŠ.As a result, much of the commentary on conservative Christians has tended to portray themŠ"as a group somehow left behind by the modern world - economically, culturally, psychologicallyŠ.
The trouble with this theory of "status discontent" - of conservative Christians as downwardly mobile rubes - was that most of them were neitherŠ.Of all these groups [evangelicals, liberal Protestants, Catholics, and nonreligious] evangelicals are the least likely to have had only a high school education or less. They are more likely than liberals or the nonreligious to belong to $50,000-and-above income bracket. And they are no more likely to live in rural areas than anyone else; the new centers of conservative Christianity, it turns out, are the prosperous suburbs in Midwestern states like Kansas and Oklahoma. *****
Yoshie