First, consistent with the extant literature, the effect of control variables
such as education, marital status, urban residence and residence of the south
are in the expected direction. With respect to psychological trauma and the
economic conditions of respondents, the analysis indicates that some of the
main effects are not consistent with our hypothesis. For example, our eco-
nomic variable, poverty, is negatively correlated with attendance at religious
services. This is the case for the main effects model in 1978 and the main
effects and full models in 1998. This indicates that those in poverty are not
necessarily turning to religious participation in an effort to ease their plight
in life. Such a result requires an explanation as to why this is the case. One
of our speculations is that people living below the poverty level may be less
inclined to go to church due to the capital investment required for attending
(tithing, proper attire, etc.). Additional research is needed to investigate poten-
tial explanations for this relationship.
William Julius Wilson (1987:20) describes the growth of the hyper ghetto
and increasing social dislocations (“crime, drug addiction, out-of-wedlock
births, female-headed families, and welfare dependency”), as a result of the
transition from an industrial to a post industrial economy. If religiosity is a
response to social trauma, then one would expect to see increasing religios-
ity in the inner-city ghetto as a response to the increasing social dislocations.
Elijah Anderson argues, on the other hand, building on the framework pro-
vided by Wilson, that because of this shift, there has been a transition in role
models from the old head to the new old head: “Traditionally the ‘old head’
was a man of stable means who believed in hard work, family life, and the
church” (Anderson 1990:3). The new old head, who is the antithesis of this
Protestant work ethic, is the drug dealer. Given this logic, with the replace-
ment of the old head by the new old head, one would expect to see a decline
in church attendance. This raises the question whether the urban underclass
is turning to religion to ameliorate the stress caused by increased social dis-
locations.
Our analysis demonstrates that the relationship between the urban poor
and public religious participation moves from a negative relationship in 1978
(i.e., life in urban poverty is associated with lower frequency of attendance)
to a positive relationship in 1998. The analysis for 1998 lends support for
Wilson’s position. This pattern is evident for those in urban poverty but not
for those below the poverty level in the general population.
Our analysis demonstrates a consistent, significant relationship between
psychological trauma and attendance at religious services. The coefficients
350 • David Gay, Warren S. Goldstein, and Anna Campbell Buck