Friday, February 29, 2008

Elite ethno-religious group: I run across bloggers all the time who are extremely interested in a small but very elite ethno-religious group. Even though they are a tiny sliver of the total American population, they are found in disproportionate numbers in the highest echelons of society.

Always interested in precision, I wanted to see what the General Social Survey (GSS) had to say about this group. Compared to all whites, they are three times as likely to be in the highest income bracket. They are four times as likely to hold the single-most prestigious job (according to the GSS) in America--an MD. Their rate of earning graduate degrees is 3 times that of the average.

More than 80% believe that America should take an active role in world affairs. Almost 90% believe we should stay in the UN. More than 80% believe that immigration improves American society, and almost 60% feel that we should either increase or maintain current levels of immigration.

For decades, this group has worked relentlessly to undermine traditional America with its liberal agenda: immigration rights, human rights, anti-racism and anti-Semitism, homosexual rights, affirmative action, economic justice, and feminism.

Oh, by the way, the group is the Episcopal Church of America. (Okay, maybe I cheated a bit on the "ethno" part, but it is true that the ancestors of half of the current members were from Great Britain (GSS)).

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:26 AM

    ROFL! And I thought you were talking about...

    Now, here's my question. Is the elite anti-Americanism decried by MacDonald et al. a Jewish invention, or did the Jews simply assimilate elite anti-American views on their way up the social ladder? The Hollywood movies of the 50s and earlier were patriotic and pro-assimilation.

    Seriously, what do the rest of you think? Where did the anti-American elite ideas come from originally?

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  2. Anonymous7:11 PM

    The Episcopal church is actually the American version of the Church of England, so the ethno-religious thing is closer than you think.

    I do kind of wonder how the Anglicans and Episcopalians feel about their church being created so Henry VIII could marry a new wife.

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  3. Anonymous2:14 PM

    Isn’t there a problem with the analysis you provide, in that it doesn’t tell us what the Episcopalians thought on these issues back let us say in the 1950s and then the 1960s and then the 1970s? In other words, unless we know what this group thought on these issues over the last half century, we don’t know whether they were leading the charge for the views you list, or were in fact following an agenda established by others.

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  4. You forgot to mention .

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  5. Episcopalianism was the church you joined if you moved to Manhattan in 1900 to make it big in business. It was the social climber's religion. So, it absorbed a lot of the most ambitious Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and the like.

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  6. Anonymous1:53 PM

    I think it is clear that the Episcopalians were following rather than leading the social revolution over the past half century. By the 1950s Episcopalians had lost most of the importance of the status they once had and there was certainly no major media presence that one could attribute to Episcopalians. And it was through the media that the social revolution became a success and was able to influence the views of a majority of the populace.

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  7. Anonymous6:39 PM

    There's no secret conspiracy of Episcopalians/Anglicans pulling the true levers of power from behind the scenes. But, dammit, there ought to be!

    intellectual pariah

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