Specifying the Impact of Conservative Protestantism on Educational Attainment

Abstract

Recent studies have demonstrated that conservative Protestantism negatively affects educational advancement. However, these studies have treated conservative Protestantism as a monolithic religious bloc that uniformly constrains achieving higher education. Disaggregating conservative Protestantism into fundamentalists, Pentecostals, and evangelicals reveals that the relationship between conservative Protestantism and educational attainment is more complex than recently shown. Findings from a nationally representative sample of Americans show that fundamentalists and Pentecostals are generally less likely to be college educated relative to other religious groups and nonreligious affiliates. The findings also show that not only are evangelicals more likely to be college educated than fundamentalists and Pentecostals, but with the exception of Jews, they are as likely or more likely than other religious groups and nonreligious affiliates to be college educated. This article suggests that different cultural traditions explain the variation in educational attainment among conservative Protestants.Recent years have witnessed renewed scholarship developing one of Max Weber's key theoretical insights in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: the material consequences of religious orientations and practices. Using cross-national data, Barro and McCleary (2003) reported that country-level measures of belief in hell, heaven, and the afterlife were robust determinants of economic growth, presumably because they promote values that stimulate productivity, such as honesty, thrift, and a work ethic. Employing individual-level survey data, Keister (2003) found that childhood and adult religious service attendance had a significant positive effect on wealth accumulation. She posited that this was because participation in religious ceremonies cultivates ideas of and skills for "correct" and conventional living. Similarly, Loury (2004) showed that the more individuals attended religious services during adolescence, the more likely they were to complete a greater number of years of schooling later in life.As Weber theorized, these studies demonstrate that religious orientations and practices can generate material gain. Yet other research highlights the opposite. Much of this research focuses on the constraining nature of conservative Protestant cultural orientations for material pursuits, especially educational attainment. Drawing on the writings of popular conservative Protestant elites, Darnell and Sherkat (1997) specified the ways secular education undermines the theological foundations of conservative Protestantism. For instance, they documented how the humanist and scientific philosophies in secular education challenge doctrinal orthodoxy and are thought to endanger the souls of believers. Given such threats of secular instruction, Darnell and Sherkat (1997) hypothesized that individuals embedded in conservative Protestant communities would oppose secular instruction and thus would not pursue higher education. To te...

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Empirics on the Origins of Preferences: The Case of College Major and Religiosity

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