“We Represent a Definite Social Class”: The Class Identities and Resources of American Religious Groups in the Roaring Twenties

Class identity is a crucial sociological concept, but is only ever measured at the individual level. In this paper, we ask: do groups have class identities? And do those class identities correspond with material resources? To answer these questions, we examine data from 31 of the most prominent American religious denominations in the early 20th century. We find that religious groups expressed palpable class identities in their denominational periodicals, and that these identities were broadly aligned with these groups' material resources. This study suggests that studying class identity at the group level can deepen our understanding of inequality—both in the highly stratified field of organized religion, and among organizations and other social groupings more generally.