Methodists are still Baptists who can read

Methodists are still Baptists who can read

Income by Religions:

Good has a rather unwieldy graph showing religion by income. No surprises, with Jews first and Hindus second in percent with six figure incomes, and Jehovah’s Witnesses and black Protestant churches last. It would be interesting to know whether there are still affluence distinctions mainline white Protestants, such as Episcopalian v. Methodist.

On a national level, there are. Pew’s Religious Landscape Survey has detailed tables on educations, income, etc., broken down by denomination. Here’s a table I created (I left out historically black denominations). The values are percentages in each category, though the last column is a ratio:

Denomination< $30 K$30 – $49 K$50 – $74 K$75 – $99 K$100 K +Post-gradLiberal($100 K income)/(Post-grad)
Episcopal161911183527261.3
Presbyterian Church USA161919182824161.17
United Methodist232119162214141.57
Disciplines of Christ311421142017121.18
Presbyterian Church in America (Evangelical)342016121813141.38
United Church of Christ272021141821210.86
Evangelical Lutheran242421151711151.55
Lutheran, Missouri Synod (Evangelical)24202018179121.89
Southern Baptist30251911157102.14
Church of Christ37241711116121.83
Independent Baptist3725171111592.2
Seventh-Day Adventist4626107115162.2
American Baptist462216985161.6
Assemblies of God412615118462
Total Population312217131811201.64

I ordered by % with more than $100,000 per year income, except for the total American population, which is at the bottom. The relationship between education and income is pretty strong on a denominational level:
Methodists are still Baptists who can read

I was curious if there was a relationship between liberalism and being relatively poor in relation to educational attainment. The United Church of Christ stands out here. So here’s a plot:
Methodists are still Baptists who can read

This probably needs to be looked at in more detail, this was just a “quick & dirty.” Though it is striking to me how the 19th century truism of a social rank order of Episcopal > Presbyterian > Methodist > Baptists, seems to obtain in the early 21st century. Sensitivity to initial conditions.

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Razib Khan