For the past two months, Charles Murray's Coming Apart has focused discussion on an American social disaster: the cultural disintegration of the working class. Many before Murray had noted the increasing prevalence of single parenting, grandparents raising grandchildren, suspect workers' disability claims, and other warning signs, especially among people in lower income ranges. But Murray's book makes the case that together these signs point to general moral collapse. As my recent review of Christian Smith's Lost in Transition showed, these trends are not unique to the working class, but Murray demonstrates that they have especially devastated that segment of society in the past fifty years.
One of Murray's most remarkable findings is that, when compared to the upper 20 percent of American earners, the bottom 30 percent is significantly less religious. After reading Coming Apart, President Obama's 2008 comments about the working class clinging to "guns or religion" seem not only elitist, but false (at least on religion). The working class may well have fewer open atheists among them, but growing numbers of them are functionally secular—never attending church, and having only vestigial remnants of Christian beliefs.
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