The Australian Community survey (1998) found similar results among people of other denominations. Most younger people attending Anglican and Baptist churches, for example, were also involved in professions working with people or in home duties. Few were employers, in skilled trades or in technical professions. To put it in other terms, 27% of people in professions working with people attend church monthly or more often compared with 16% of employers and 17% of those involved in technical professions.

These results are interesting in the light of the observations of the American sociologist, Peter Berger (1992). Berger has observed about the divergence in the middle class between the knowledge and business class from the 1970s onwards. Berger argues these two classes or sub-classes have different economic bases and quite different sets of values. The knowledge class, which is constituted by those who work primarily with people, tends to receive much of its money, directly or indirectly, from government sources. People in the knowledge class work in areas of education, community development or health. Success in these professions is not easily measured, as it has to do with incremental changes in individuals in their education, health or social relationships. Most clergy identify strongly with the knowledge class and with knowledge class values.

Some of the people whose lives revolve around their families would also fit into the 'knowledge class'. Like the professionals working with people, there are no easy measures of success and failure in family life. Values have to do with people and their wellbeing, rather than with what is produced or sold.

In comparison, most people in the business class measure their achievements very easily in terms of the bottom line on their financial statements. Most of them are dealing primarily with products rather than people. They earn their incomes by their production.

The class division is not just between professionals. However, the dominant group in the knowledge class is professionals working with people, and it would appear from the survey that they have remained in the churches in comparatively large numbers. By contrast, a higher proportion of those in technical professions has ceased to attend. The churches of Australia have encouraged and supported those in people-oriented professions in that they have implicitly or explicitly upheld the values of care and compassion and have supported education, health and community development.

Studies around the world have noted that the business class and knowledge have quite different values in a range of areas. The knowledge class, for example, tends to have a higher interest in environmental issues and values beauty for its own sake, apart from any commercial value it might have.

The Australian Community Survey (1998) supported these international studies. It found that Australian adult professionals working with people gave greater emphasis to the following values compared with people in most other types of professions, including technical, employers, skilled trades and others:
- Spirituality
- Meaning in life
- Environment
- Helpfulness to others
- Social justice
- Equality
- Friendship

On the other hand, these people scored the following values lower than did people of other professions:
- Success
- Wealth
- Enjoyment of life
- National security
- Politeness

The fact that national security and politeness are more important to the business class than the knowledge class reflects the high value in the business class of maintaining the social order. Social order is essential for the maintenance of business.

The business class has not lost all religious faith. 76% of people employing more than 10 people said they believed in God, compared with 80% of professionals working with people. 71% of these employers said they believed the Bible was inspired, compared with 76% of professionals working with people. Professionals in technical fields were just a little more sceptical: 72% affirming belief in God and 67% believing the Bible to be inspired. However, the church appears to be largely irrelevant to many of these people. Indeed, those who did attend generally were people who strongly affirmed the importance of family life - and probably attended not because the church related to work, but to family.

Personal religious practices as well as public ones are less common in the business and production classes compared with the knowledge class. 27% of professionals working with people indicated that they prayed at least daily, compared with 16% of people in technical professions or in skilled trades, and 18% of employers.

More detailed information from the Australian Community Survey (conducted by NCLS and Edith Cowan University in 1998) showed that among those who attended church as children, more tended to move into professions oriented to people. In other words, it appeared as if churches encouraged people to take up such professions. However, of those children who went to church and moved into technical professions, many more have dropped out of church life.

Farmers are another occupational group with relatively high rates of church attendance. This may be partly because the churches have provided an opportunity for socialising in rural areas, although there are many other voluntary organisations through which this also occurs. Possibly the way of life of farmers, their work in providing the necessities of life, has received greater support from the churches than that of people in most other occupations. The sociologist, Thomas Luckmann (1967), in commenting on the high levels of church involvement of farmers in Europe, drew attention to the different structural nature of their work compared to that of those involved in industrial and business processes. He argued that as rationalisation and other industrial types of processes increased in the agricultural world so the involvement of farmers would decrease. Nevertheless, in colloquial terms, the farmers' dependence on the weather cycles has kept farmers closer to nature and closer to a sense of the presence of God.

Responses

How should church organisations respond to these findings?

Churches have lost the business and manufacturing people partly because they have little to say about their interests ... and what they do have to say is often negative. Churches have given little support to people involved in the workforce. For the most part, they have not emphasised the importance of business, manufacturing, trade or commerce. Indeed, the churches have often appeared critical of the business world and its underlying market orientation, the values of competition, and of the worth of financial and material goods. Those for whom life revolves around their business have not found the same support within the life of the churches as those who lives revolve around their families or around people.

The exception to the critical attitudes of many churches has been the idea, common in many Pentecostal churches, that wealth creation is a sign of God's blessing. Without necessarily affirming the 'success theology' of many Pentecostal churches, there may be other ways in which church organisations might re-open the dialogue with the business and production classes. Surely they do contribute to the wellbeing of society and may do so in a positive way!

However, the problem may lie deeper than the attitudes of the churches. It may lie with the tendencies within society towards a greater rationalisation of processes where 'God' or any reference to the transcendent has become more redundant. Secularisation does not occur primarily by explicit rejection of the divine. There are just as many 'knowledge class' as 'business class' people who reject the idea of the existence of God. Rather, secularisation occurs as the divine becomes increasingly irrelevant to the processes and actions of modern life.

However, to say that the values of economics and politics have taken over in the business and production arenas is too strong a statement. The business class valued honesty, friendship, politeness, freedom and social justice above all other values. While they affirmed 'wealth' more highly than the business class, it was actually the less affirmed value in a list of twenty. Social and inter-personal remain important for the business class, more important than production, success and wealth, even though there are significant differences of emphasis between the two classes. There is still much room for the discussion of values and the 'ultimate principles' of life.

Philip Hughes

References:
Berger, Peter. (1992), A Far Glory. New York, Doubleday.
Luckmann, Thomas. (1967), The Invisible Religion. New York, Macmillan.
Some of this material was first published in:
Philip Hughes, John Bellamy, Alan Black and Peter Kaldor, 'Dropping out of church: the Australian experience' in Leslie Francis and Yaacov Katz, Joining and Leaving Religion: Research Perspectives, Gracewing, Leominster, England, 2000.