Amateur students of U.S. manners have long made broad assumptions about the kinds of followers various faiths attract. Sample assumptions: Protestantism appeals mainly to the middle class, Episcopalians are the most conservative of religious groups, Jews the best educated. Just how correct are these generalizations? The Federal Council of Churches got together with Princeton University psychologists to find out. The results of their poll samplings, published as the Council's current study in its series on Christianity and the Economic Order, contain a few surprises.
Wealth. The membership of U.S. Protestant churches has about the same percentage of rich & poor as the...