BLACK-WHITE DIFFERENCES IN RELIGIOSITY - ITEM ANALYSES AND A FORMAL STRUCTURAL TEST

Data collected as part of the Middletown project in Muncie, Indiana, are used to test both structuraland magnitude differences between black and white dimensions of religiosity. The analysis of LinearStructural Relationships (LISREL) handles a numberof potential problems moreadequately than the traditional factoranalytic approach. Fourdimensions are examined: personal religious behavior, belief orthodoxy, ritual involvement, and consequentiality. Though the latent dimensions appear for both blacks and whites, the dimensions are not orthogonal. Furthermore, the dimensions are not interrelated the sameway for whites as they are for blacks, and specific items do not relate to the latent dimensions the same way for the two groups. Though a great deal of similarity' exists for black and white religiosity, the results suggest, paraphrasing Stark (1972), that “differencesof kind in piety” exist between blacksand whites. These differences have important implications for the future study of religion. © 1990, Association for the Sociology of Religion.