Going Higher: African American Women’s Religious Participation, Spirituality, and
Socioeconomic Status
Religion has traditionally been a central force in African American life (Baer and Singer
2002), with religious organizations providing a locus for individual spiritual growth and
collective community support and political action. According to Lincoln and Mamiya, the Black
Church “has no challenger as the cultural womb of the black community” (1990:8). African
American religious institutions thus merit in-depth study for their past significance and potential
for continuing to foster social change.
Crawford argues that “the transformative power of the black church has been weakened
by the eroticism of affluence, education, and ‘opportunity’” (2002:109) as African Americans
have gained socioeconomic status; one important but neglected area of study is the effect of
upward mobility on spirituality and religious participation. Although in the past 20 years the
amount of research on African American religious and spiritual participation has increased, much
of it is either qualitative or general. Taylor, Chatters, and Levin (2004) have provided the most
thorough resource thus far, analyzing over 350 studies and data sources and augmenting them
with their own focus groups. Despite widespread acknowledgment of the diversity of African
American religious experience, information on within-group variations is still quite limited. For
example, although African American women are significantly more religiously active than
African American men (Taylor, Chatters, Levin 2004:37), there are still few studies focusing
specifically on women; and there is also little data on socioeconomic differences. This paper will
rely primarily on analysis of available studies featuring race, class, and gender to explore the
effect of increasing status (indicated primarily by income and education) on African American
women’s spiritual activity and religious participation.
African Americans as a group, and African American women in particular, have a high
level of religious involvement (Chatters, Taylor, and Lincoln, 1999). In addition, social scientists
have studied African American women’s spirituality as coping behavior and a way to make
meaning and attain growth (Mattis 2002; Banks-Wallace and Parks 2004). It might be reasonable
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Convention