“Can the middle class be saved?”

That’s the title of a compelling cover story in this month’s Atlantic Magazine. The piece, written by Don Peck, is full of interesting data and analysis. I’ve long thought that class analysis is something we’re not very comfortable with in the US, but something we need to become more aware of and engaged in. This piece is, I think, a good start. But there are some fascinating tidbits deep into the article that are particularly important for those of us in communities of faith to attend to. For instance:

One stubborn stereotype in the United States is that religious roots are deepest in blue-collar communities and small towns, and, more generally, among Americans who do not have college degrees. That was true in the 1970s. Yet since then, attendance at religious services has plummeted among moderately educated Americans, and is now much more common among college grads. So, too, is participation in civic groups. High-school seniors from affluent households are more likely to volunteer, join groups, go to church, and have strong academic ambitions than seniors used to be, and are as trusting of other people as seniors a generation ago; their peers from less affluent households have become less engaged on each of those fronts. A cultural chasm—which did not exist 40 years ago and which was still relatively small 20 years ago—has developed between the traditional middle class and the top 30 percent of society.

There has long been talk in sociology of religion and history circles about the historic class roots of specific denominations, but this broader shift that Peck is pointing to is something that I think is finally beginning to seriously affect us in seminaries. Our students increasingly are coming from reasonably affluent households in outer ring suburban settings, which means they're familiar with large churches that have multiple staff. But they have next to no experience with the small churches in rural or urban settings to which they are likely to be called in their initial pastorates. Now it's increasingly clear that they also have next to no experience with people from working class backgrounds. Nor do many of us as faculty have much awareness of, or comfort with, working across multiple class backgrounds. After all, to even teach in a seminary we have to have a PhD, which already places us in the upper, upper ring of educational class.

I think, for instance, of the incredibly creative work of several of my former students who are trying to plant and build churches. Much of their work clusters around coffee houses, brew pubs, and settings in which folk/rock music works. Many fewer of them are familiar with the country music settings, the hunting/fishing/farming metaphors, and the challenges of people who are public school teachers, health sector workers and others who live in shift time. Or I think of many of my colleagues across the ATS schools, who are deeply comfortable with print literacy and eager to be involved with philosophical argument, but have next to no familiarity with popular culture or the habits and yearnings of those for whom print literacy is less and less important.

We need to find ways to communicate across these various divides, and we need to do so sooner rather than later.

I do not pretend to understand economics. But I think I need to learn more, and I think that along with understanding more of how the economy functions, all of us in communities of faith have to work harder and more intentionally at taking seriously the biblical mandates to care for the anawim. Perhaps then we could finally take seriously God's call to tend the common good that all might prosper.