Evangelicals in the New Class: Class versus Subcultural Predictors of Ideology

Theories of the new class stress the powerful liberalizing effects of working in the professional-man- agerial occupations. This paper tests the relative importance of class and religious subculture in predicting political and social attitudes, by looking at the views of evangelicals who work in the new class. Multivariate regression analyses reveal that religious subculture and class are both highly significant predictors of ideological position on sexual mores, abortion, sex roles, and civil liberties. Additionally, evangelical new-class workers resist the liberalizing effects of class more than other new class members on sexual mores, while accommodating to new-class liberalism on abortion, gender roles, and civil liberties.