In theUnited States,White Anglo-Saxon Protestants orWealthy Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASP) is asociological term which is often used to describewhiteProtestant Americans ofEnglish, or more broadlyBritish, descent who are generally part of the whitedominant culture, and who belong toProtestant denominations. Some sociologists and commentators useWASP more broadly to include all White Protestant Americans ofNorthwestern European andNorthern European ancestry.[2][3][4] It was seen to be in exclusionary contrast to Catholics, Jews, Irish, immigrants, southern or eastern Europeans, and the non-White. WASPs have dominated American society, culture, and politics for most of the history of the United States. Critics have disparaged them as "The Establishment".[5][6] Although the social influence of wealthy WASPs has declined since the 1960s,[7][8][9] the group continues to play a central role in American finance, politics, andphilanthropy.[10]
WASP is also used for similar elites inAustralia,New Zealand, andCanada.[11][12][13][14] The 1998Random House Unabridged Dictionary says the term is "sometimes disparaging and offensive".[15]
In the early Middle Ages, Anglian and Saxon kingdoms were established over most of England ('land of the Angles'). After theNorman Conquest in 1066,Anglo-Saxon refers to the pre-invasion English people. Political scientistAndrew Hacker used the termWASP in 1957, withW standing for 'wealthy' rather than 'white' (since 'white Anglo-Saxon' is a tautology). TheP formed a humorous epithet to imply "waspishness" or someone likely to make sharp, slightly cruel remarks.[5] Describing the class of Americans that held "national power in its economic, political, and social aspects", Hacker wrote:
These 'old' Americans possess, for the most part, some common characteristics. First of all, they are'WASPs'—in the cocktail party jargon of the sociologists. That is, they are wealthy, they are Anglo-Saxon in origin, and they are Protestants (and disproportionatelyEpiscopalian).[16]
An earlier usage appeared in the African-American newspaperThe New York Amsterdam News in 1948, when authorStetson Kennedy wrote:
In America, we find the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) ganging up to take their frustrations out on whatever minority group happens to be handy — whether Negro, Catholic, Jewish, Japanese or whatnot.[17]
The term was later popularized by sociologist andUniversity of Pennsylvania professorE. Digby Baltzell, himself a WASP, in his 1964 bookThe Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America. Baltzell stressed the closed or caste-like characteristic of the group by arguing that "There is a crisis in American leadership in the middle of the twentieth century that is partly due, I think, to the declining authority of an establishment which is now based on an increasingly castelike White-Anglo Saxon-Protestant (WASP) upper class."[18]
CitingGallup polling data from 1976, Kit and Frederica Konolige wrote in their 1978 bookThe Power of Their Glory, "As befits a church that belongs to the worldwideAnglican Communion, Episcopalianism has the United Kingdom to thank for the ancestors of fully 49 percent of its members. ... The stereotype of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) finds its fullest expression in the Episcopal Church."[19]
WASP is also used in Australia and Canada for similar elites.[11][12][13][14] WASPs traditionally have been associated withEpiscopal (orAnglican),Presbyterian,United Methodist,Congregationalist, and othermainline Protestant denominations; however, the term has expanded to include other Protestant denominations as well.[20]
The concept of Anglo-Saxonism, and especially Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, evolved in the late 19th century, especially among American Protestant missionaries eager to transform the world. Historian Richard Kyle says:
Protestantism had not yet split into two mutually hostile camps – the liberals and fundamentalists. Of great importance, evangelical Protestantism still dominated the cultural scene. American values bore the stamp of this Anglo-Saxon Protestant ascendancy. The political, cultural, religious, and intellectual leaders of the nation were largely of a Northern European Protestant stock, and they propagated public morals compatible with their background.[21]
BeforeWASP came into use in the 1960s, the termAnglo-Saxon served some of the same purposes. Like the newer termWASP, the older termAnglo-Saxon was used derisively by writers hostile to an informal alliance between Britain and the U.S. The negative connotation was especially common amongIrish Americans and writers in France.Anglo-Saxon, meaning in effect the wholeAnglosphere, remains a term favored by the French, used disapprovingly in contexts such as criticism of theSpecial Relationship of close diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the UK and complaints about perceived "Anglo-Saxon" cultural or political dominance. In December 1918, after victory in the World War, President Woodrow Wilson told a British official in London: "You must not speak of us who come over here as cousins, still less as brothers; we are neither. Neither must you think of us as Anglo-Saxons, for that term can no longer be rightly applied to the people of the United States....There are only two things which can establish and maintain closer relations between your country and mine: they are community of ideals and of interests."[22] The term remains in use in Ireland as a term for the British or English, and sometimes inScottish Nationalist discourse. Irish-American humoristFinley Peter Dunne popularized the ridicule of "Anglo-Saxons", even calling PresidentTheodore Roosevelt one. Roosevelt insisted he was Dutch.[23] "To be genuinely Irish is to challenge WASP dominance", argues California politicianTom Hayden.[24] The depiction of the Irish in the films ofJohn Ford was a counterpoint to WASP standards of rectitude. "The procession of rambunctious and feckless Celts through Ford's films, Irish and otherwise, was meant to cock a snoot at WASP or 'lace-curtain Irish' ideas of respectability."[25]
In Australia,Anglo orAnglo-Saxon refers to people of English descent, whileAnglo-Celtic includes people of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish descent.[26]
In France,Anglo-Saxon refers to the combined impact of Britain and the United States on European affairs.Charles de Gaulle repeatedly sought to "rid France of Anglo-Saxon influence".[27] The term is used with more nuance in discussions by French writers on French decline, especially as an alternative model to which France should aspire, how France should adjust to its two most prominent global competitors, and how it should deal with social and economic modernization.[28]
Outside of Anglophone countries, the termAnglo-Saxon and its translations are used to refer to the Anglophone peoples and societies of Britain, the United States, and countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Variations include the GermanAngelsachsen,[29] Frenchle modèle anglo-saxon,[30] Spanishanglosajón,[31] DutchAngelsaksisch model [nl] and ItalianPaesi anglosassoni [it].
In the nineteenth century, Anglo-Saxons was often used as a synonym for all people of English descent and sometimes more generally, for all the English-speaking peoples of the world. It was often used in implying superiority, much to the annoyance of outsiders. For example, American clergymanJosiah Strong boasted in 1890:
In 1700 this race numbered less than 6,000,000 souls. In 1800, Anglo-Saxons (I use the term somewhat broadly to include all English-speaking peoples) had increased to about 20,500,000, and now, in 1890, they number more than 120,000,000.[32]
In 1893, Strong envisioned a future "new era" of triumphant Anglo-Saxonism:
Is it not reasonable to believe that this race is destined to dispossess many weaker ones, assimilate others, and mould the remainder until... it has Anglo-Saxonized mankind?[33]
The popular and sociological usage of the term WASP has sometimes expanded to include not just "Anglo-Saxon" orEnglish-American elites but also American people of other ProtestantNorthwestern European origin, including ProtestantDutch Americans,Scottish Americans,[10][34]Welsh Americans,[35]German Americans,Ulster Scots or "Scotch-Irish" Americans,[36] andScandinavian Americans.[4][37] A 1969Time article stated, "purists like to confine Wasps to descendants of theBritish Isles; less exacting analysts are willing to throw in Scandinavians, Netherlanders and Germans."[38] The sociologist Charles H. Anderson writes, "Scandinavians are second-class WASPs" but know it is "better to be a second-class WASP than a non-WASP".[39]
Sociologists William Thompson and Joseph Hickey described the further expansion of the term's meaning:
The termWASP has many meanings. In sociology it reflects that segment of the U.S. population that founded the nation and traced their heritages to...Northwestern Europe. The term...has become more inclusive. To many people, WASP now includes most 'white' people who are not ... members of any minority group.[40][page needed]
Apart from Protestant English, British, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian Americans, other ethnic groups frequently included under the labelWASP include Americans ofFrench Huguenot descent,[37] Protestant Americans ofGermanic European descent in general,[41] and established Protestant American families of a "mix" of or of "vague"Germanic Northwestern European heritages.[42]
Historically, the early Anglo-Protestant settlers in the seventeenth century were the most successful group, culturally, economically, and politically, and they maintained their dominance until the late twentieth century at the earliest.[43] Numbers of the mostwealthy and affluent American families, such asBoston Brahmin,First Families of Virginia,Old Philadelphians,[44]Tidewater, andLowcountrygentry orold money, were WASPs.[43] Commitment to the ideals of theEnlightenment meant that they sought to assimilate newcomers from outside of theBritish Isles, but few were interested in adopting aPan-European identity for the nation, much less turning it into a global melting pot. However, in the early 1900s, liberal progressives and modernists began promoting more inclusive ideals for what the national identity of the United States should be. While the more traditionalist segments of society continued to maintain their Anglo-Protestant ethnocultural traditions, universalism and cosmopolitanism started gaining favor among the elites. These ideals became institutionalized after the Second World War, and ethnic minorities started moving towards institutional parity with the once dominant Anglo-Protestants.[43]
The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultural preferences forclassical music and traditional religious architecture had defined American high culture and religious life in the United States.[45]
Some of the first colleges anduniversities in America, includingHarvard,[47]Yale,[48]Princeton,[49]Rutgers,Columbia,[50]Dartmouth,[51]Pennsylvania,[52][53]Duke,[54]Boston University,[55]Williams,Bowdoin,Middlebury,[56] andAmherst, all were founded by mainline Protestant denominations.
Expensive, privateprep schools and universities have historically been associated with WASPs. Colleges such as theIvy League, theLittle Ivies, and theSeven Sisters colleges are particularly intertwined with the culture.[57] Until roughly World War II, Ivy League universities were composed largely of white Protestants. While admission to these schools is generally based upon merit, many of these universities give alegacy preference for the children of alumni in order to link elite families (and their wealth) with the school. These legacy admissions have allowed for the continuation of WASP influence on important sectors of the US.[58]
Members of Protestant denominations associated with WASPs have some of the highest proportions ofadvanced degrees. Examples include theEpiscopal Church, with 76% of those polled having some college education, and thePresbyterian Church, with 64%.[59][60][61]
According toScientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States byHarriet Zuckerman, between 1901 and 1972, 72% of AmericanNobel Prize laureates have come from a Protestant background,[62] mostly from Episcopalian, Presbyterian or Lutheran background, while Protestants made up roughly 67% of the US population during that period.[63] Of Nobel prizes awarded to Americans between 1901 and 1972, 84.2% of those inChemistry,[63] 60% inMedicine,[63] and 58.6% inPhysics[63] were awarded to Protestants.
The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant upper class has largely heldchurch membership in theProtestant denominations ofChristianity, chiefly thePresbyterian,Episcopalian, andCongregationalist traditions.[64][65][66]
CitingGallup polling data from 1976, Kit and Frederica Konolige wrote in their 1978 bookThe Power of Their Glory, "As befits a church that belongs to the worldwideAnglican Communion, Episcopalianism has theUnited Kingdom to thank for the ancestors of fully 49 percent of its members. ... The stereotype of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) finds its fullest expression in the Episcopal Church."[19]
From 1854 until about 1964, white Protestants were predominantlyRepublicans.[18] More recently, the group is split more evenly between the Republican andDemocratic parties.[67]
Episcopalians andPresbyterians are among the wealthiest religious groups and were formerly disproportionately represented in American business, law, and politics.[16][68][5]Old money in the United States was typically associated with WASP status,[69] particularly with the Episcopal andPresbyterian Church.[70] Some of thewealthiest and most affluent American families such as theVanderbilts,Astors,Rockefellers,[71]Du Ponts,Roosevelts,Forbes,Fords,[71]Mellons,[71]Whitneys,Morgans, and Harrimans are white primarilymainline Protestant families.[68]
According to a 2014 study by thePew Research Center, Episcopalians ranked as the third wealthiest religious group in the United States, with 35% of Episcopalians living in households with incomes of at least $100,000.[72] Presbyterians ranked as the fourth most financially successful religious group in the United States, with 32% of Presbyterians living in households with incomes of at least $100,000.[73]
TheBoston Brahmins, who were regarded as the nation's social and cultural elites, were often associated with theAmerican upper class,Harvard University,[77] and the Episcopal Church.[78][79]
Like other sociological groups, WASPs tend to concentrate near each other. These areas are often exclusive and associated with top schools, high incomes, well-established church communities, and high real-estate values.[80][failed verification] For example, in the Detroit area, WASPs predominantly possessed the wealth that came from the new automotive industry. After the1967 Detroit riot, they tended to congregate in theGrosse Pointe suburbs. In theChicago metropolitan area, white Protestants primarily reside in theNorth Shore suburbs, theBarrington area in the northwest suburbs, and inOak Park andDuPage County in the western suburbs.[81] Traditionally, theUpper East Side inManhattan has been dominated by wealthy White Anglo-Saxon Protestant families.[75][76]
David Brooks, a columnist forThe New York Times who attended an Episcopal prep school, writes that WASPs took pride in "good posture, genteel manners, personal hygiene, pointless discipline, the ability to sit still for long periods of time."[82] According to the essayistJoseph Epstein, WASPs developed a style of understated quiet leadership.[83]
A common practice of WASP families is presenting their daughters of marriageable age (traditionally at the age of 17 or 18 years old) at adébutante ball, such as theInternational Debutante Ball at theWaldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.[84]
America's social elite was a small, closed group. The leadership was well-known to the readers of newspaper society pages, but in larger cities it was hard to remember everyone, or to keep track of the newdebutantes and marriages.[85] The solution was theSocial Register, which listed the names and addresses of about 1 percent of the population. Most were WASPs, and they included families who mingled at the same privateclubs, attended the right teas andcotillions, worshipped together at prestige churches, funded the proper charities, lived in exclusive neighborhoods, and sent their daughters tofinishing schools[86] and their sons away toprep schools.[87][page needed] In the heyday of WASP dominance, theSocial Register delineated high society. According toThe New York Times, its influence had faded by the late 20th century:
Once, the Social Register was a juggernaut in New York social circles... Nowadays, however, with the waning of the WASP elite as a social and political force, the register's role as an arbiter of who counts and who doesn't is almost an anachronism. In Manhattan, where charity galas are at the center of the social season, the organizing committees are studded with luminaries from publishing, Hollywood and Wall Street and family lineage is almost irrelevant.[88]
In 2007,The New York Times reported that there was a rising interest in the WASP culture.[89] In their review of Susanna Salk'sA Privileged Life: Celebrating WASP Style, they stated that Salk "is serious about defending the virtues of WASP values, and their contribution to American culture."[89]
By the 1980s, brands such asLacoste andRalph Lauren, which ironically are ofFrench andJewish extraction respectively and their logos became associated with thepreppy fashion style which was associated with WASP culture.[90]
The termWASP became associated with theAmerican upper class due to over-representation of WASPs in the upper echelons of society. Until the mid–20th century, industries such as banks, insurance, railroads, utilities, and manufacturing were dominated by WASPs.[91]
TheFounding Fathers of the United States were mostly educated, well-to-do, ofBritish ancestry, and Protestants. According to a study of the biographies of signers of the Declaration of Independence byCaroline Robbins:
The Signers came for the most part from an educated elite, were residents of older settlements, and belonged with a few exceptions to a moderately well-to-do class representing only a fraction of the population. Native or born overseas, they were of British stock and of the Protestant faith.[92][93]
Catholics in the Northeast and the Midwest—mostly immigrants and their descendants fromIreland andGermany as well as southern and eastern Europe—came to dominateDemocratic Party politics in big cities through the wardboss system. Catholic politicians were often the target of WASP political hostility.[38]
Political scientistEric Kaufmann argues that "the 1920s marked the high tide of WASP control".[94] In 1965, Canadian sociologist John Porter, inThe Vertical Mosaic, argued that British origins were disproportionately represented in the higher echelons of Canadian class, income, political power, the clergy, the media, etc. However, more recently, Canadian scholars have traced the decline of the WASP elite.[12]
According to Ralph E. Pyle:
A number of analysts have suggested that WASP dominance of the institutional order has become a thing of the past. The accepted wisdom is that after World War II, the selection of individuals for leadership positions was increasingly based on factors such as motivation and training rather than ethnicity and social lineage.[91]
Many reasons have been given for the decline of WASP power, and books have been written detailing it.[95] Self-imposed diversity incentives opened the country's most elite schools.[96] TheGI Bill brought higher education to new ethnic arrivals, who found middle class jobs in the postwar economic expansion. Nevertheless, white Protestants remain influential in the country's cultural, political, and economic elite. Scholars typically agree that the group's influence has waned since 1945, with the growing influence of other ethnic groups.[10]
After 1945, Catholics and Jews made strong inroads in getting jobs in the federalcivil service, which was once dominated by those from Protestant backgrounds, especially theDepartment of State.Georgetown University, a Catholic school, made a systematic effort to place graduates in diplomatic career tracks. By the 1990s, there were "roughly the same proportion of WASPs, Catholics, and Jews at the elite levels of the federal civil service, and a greater proportion of Jewish and Catholic elites among corporate lawyers."[97] The political scientist Theodore P. Wright Jr., argues that while the Anglo ethnicity of the U.S. presidents fromRichard Nixon throughGeorge W. Bush is evidence for the continued cultural dominance of WASPs, assimilation and social mobility, along with the ambiguity of the term, has led the WASP class to survive only by "incorporating other groups [so] that it is no longer the same group" that existed in the mid-20th century.[34]
Very few Jewish lawyers were hired by White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ("WASP") upscalewhite-shoe law firms, but they started their own. The WASP dominance in law ended when a number of major Jewish law firms attained elite status in dealing with top-ranked corporations. Most white-shoe firms also excluded Roman Catholics.[98][99][100][101] As late as 1950 there was not a single large Jewish law firm in New York City. However, by 1965 six of the 20 largest firms were Jewish; by 1980 four of the ten largest were Jewish.[102]
Two famous confrontations signifying a decline in WASP dominance were the 1952 Senate election in Massachusetts, in whichJohn F. Kennedy, a Catholic of Irish descent, defeated WASPHenry Cabot Lodge Jr.,[103] and the 1964 challenge by Arizona SenatorBarry Goldwater—anEpiscopalian[104] who had solid WASP credentials through his mother, but whose father was Jewish, and was seen by some as part of the Jewish community[105]—toNelson Rockefeller and the Eastern Republican establishment,[106] which led to the liberalRockefeller Republican wing of the party being marginalized by the 1980s, overwhelmed by the dominance of Southern and Western conservatives.[107] However, asking "Is the WASP leader a dying breed?", journalist Nina Strochlic in 2012 pointed to eleven WASP top politicians, ending with RepublicansGeorge H. W. Bush, elected in 1988, his son George W. Bush, elected in 2000 and 2004, andJohn McCain, who was nominated but defeated in 2008.[108]Mary Kenny argues thatBarack Obama, although famous as the first Black president, exemplifies highly controlled "unemotional delivery" and "rational detachment" characteristic of WASP personality traits. Indeed, he attended upper class schools such as Columbia and Harvard, and was raised by his WASP motherAnn Dunham andthe Dunham grandparents in afamily that dates toJonathan Singletary Dunham, born in Massachusetts in 1640.[109][110][111] Inderjeet Parmar and Mark Ledwidge argue that Obama pursued a typically WASP-inspired foreign policy of liberal internationalism.[112]
In the 1970s, aFortune magazine study found one-in-five of the country's largest businesses and one-in-three of its largest banks was run by an Episcopalian.[68] More recent studies indicate a still-disproportionate, though somewhat reduced, influence of WASPs among economic elites.[91]
The reversal of WASP fortune was exemplified by the Supreme Court. Historically, the great majority of its justices were of WASP heritage. The exceptions included seven Catholics and two Jews.[113] Since the 1960s, an increasing number of non-WASP justices have been appointed to the Court.[114][115] From 2010 to 2017, the Court had no Protestant members, until the appointment ofNeil Gorsuch in 2017.[116]
TheUniversity of California, Berkeley, once a WASP stronghold, has changed radically: only 30% of its undergraduates in 2007 were of European origin (including WASPs and all other Europeans), and 63% of undergraduates at the university were from immigrant families (where at least one parent was an immigrant), especially Asian.[117] Once also a WASP bastion, as of 2010 Harvard University enrolled 9,289non-Hispanic white students (44%, of which approximately 30% were Jewish), 2,658Asian American students (13%), 1,239Hispanic students (6%), and 1,198African American students (6%).[118][119]
A significant shift of American economic activity toward theSun Belt during the latter part of the 20th century and an increasingly globalized economy have also contributed to the decline in power held by Northeastern WASPs. James D. Davidson et al. argued in 1995 that while WASPs were no longer solitary among the American elite, members of the Patrician class remained markedly prevalent within the current power structure.[20]
Other analysts have argued that the extent of the decrease in WASP dominance has been overstated. In response to increasing claims of fading WASP dominance, Davidson, using data on American elites in political and economic spheres, concluded in 1994 that, while the WASP and Protestant establishment had lost some of its earlier prominence, WASPs and Protestants were still vastly overrepresented among America's elite.[34][120]
In August 2012 theNew York Times, reviewed the religion of the fifteen top national leaders: the presidential and vice-presidential nominees, the Supreme Court justices, the House Speaker, and the Senate majority leader. There were nine Catholics (six justices, both vice-presidential candidates, and the Speaker), three Jews (all from the Supreme Court), two Mormons (including the Republican presidential nomineeMitt Romney) and one African-American Protestant (incumbent President Barack Obama). There were no white Protestants.[121]
In the 21st century,WASP is often applied as a derogatory label to those withsocial privilege who are perceived to be snobbish and exclusive, such as being members of restrictive private social clubs.[91] Kevin M. Schultz stated in 2010 that WASP is "a much-maligned class identity....Today, it signifies an elitist snoot."[122]
However, others have defended WASP hegemony in the United States. According toRichard Brookhiser the "uptight, bland, and elitist" stereotype obscures the "classic WASP ideals of industry, public service, family duty, and conscience to revitalize the nation."[123] Likewise, conservative writerJoseph Epstein suggested that the United States was better off with a WASP ruling class, which he views as now being ruled by an ethnically diverse elite, which he describes as the "self-involved, over-schooled products of modern meritocracy".[124]
American films, includingAnnie Hall andMeet the Parents, have used the conflicts between WASP families and urban Jewish families for comedic effect.[125]
The 1939 Broadway playArsenic and Old Lace, later adapted into a Hollywoodfilm released in 1944, ridiculed the old American elite. The play and film depict "old-stock British Americans" a decade before they were tagged as WASPS.[126]
The playwrightA. R. Gurney (1930–2017), himself of WASP heritage, has written a series of plays that have been called "penetratingly witty studies of the WASP ascendancy in retreat".[127] Gurney told theWashington Post in 1982:
WASPs do have a culture – traditions, idiosyncrasies, quirks, particular signals and totems we pass on to one another. But the WASP culture, or at least that aspect of the culture I talk about, is enough in the past so that we can now look at it with some objectivity, smile at it, and even appreciate some of its values. There was a closeness of family, a commitment to duty, to stoic responsibility, which I think we have to say weren't entirely bad.[128]
In Gurney's playThe Cocktail Hour (1988), a lead character tells her playwright son that theater critics "don't like us... They resent us. They think we're all Republicans, all superficial and all alcoholics. Only the latter is true."[127]
FilmmakerWhit Stillman, whose godfather wasE. Digby Baltzell, has made films dealing primarily with WASP characters and subjects. Stillman has been called the "WASPWoody Allen".[129] His debut 1990 filmMetropolitan tells the story of a group of college-age Manhattan socialites during débutante season. A recurring theme of the film is the declining power of the old Protestant élite.[130]
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help){{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)Of all these northern schools, only Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania were historically Anglican; the rest are associated with revivalist Presbyterianism or Congregationalism.
Princeton was Presbyterian, while Columbia and Pennsylvania were Episcopalian.
Duke University has historical, formal, on-going, and symbolic ties with Methodism, but is an independent and non-sectarian institution ... Duke would not be the institution it is today without its ties to the Methodist Church. However, the Methodist Church does not own or direct the University. Duke is and has developed as a private nonprofit corporation which is owned and governed by an autonomous and self-perpetuating Board of Trustees
Boston University has been historically affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1839 when the Newbury Biblical Institute, the first Methodist seminary in the United States, was established in Newbury, Vermont.
For instance, concerning the religious origins of American laureates, 72 percent are Protestant ...
Protestants turn up among the American-reared laureates in slightly greater proportion to their numbers in the general population. Thus 72 percent of the seventy-one laureates but about two thirds of the American population were reared in one or another Protestant denomination mostly Presbyterian, Episcopalian, or Lutheran rather than Baptist or Fundamentalist.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)The names of fashionable families who were already Episcopalian, like the Morgans, or those, like the Fricks, who now became so, goes on interminably: Aldrich, Astor, Biddle, Booth, Brown, Du Pont, Firestone, Ford, Gardner, Mellon, Morgan, Procter, the Vanderbilt, Whitney. Episcopalians branches of the Baptist Rockefellers and Jewish Guggenheims even appeared on these family trees.
By the late nineteenth century, one of the strongest bulwarks of Brahmin power was Harvard University. Statistics underscore the close relationship between Harvard and Boston's upper strata.
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