First Place Award, Student Paper Competition

This paper reports a content analysis of church sermons in terms of social class distinctions in the memberships of two Southern Baptist churches. The major finding is that there is a relationship between social class and sermon content. The data for this analysis were obtained by the transcription of forty Sunday morning sermons. The results are interpreted as suggesting that lower class church members search for consolation while upper class congregations search for justification for and continuation of their elevated social status.