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Full-Text Articles in Sociology of Religion
"It's Not Equality": How Race, Class, And Gender Construct The Normative Religious Self Among Female Prisoners, Rachel Ellis
"It's Not Equality": How Race, Class, And Gender Construct The Normative Religious Self Among Female Prisoners, Rachel Ellis
Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Works
Prior sociological research has demonstrated that religious selves are gendered. Using the case of female inmates—some of the most disadvantaged Americans—this article shows that dominant messages constructing the religious self are not only gendered, but also deeply intertwined with race and class. Data from 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork on religion inside a U.S. state women’s prison reveal that religious volunteers—predominately middle-class African American women—preached feminine submissiveness and finding a “man of God” to marry to embody religious ideals. However, these messages were largely out of sync with the realities of working class and poor incarcerated women, especially given their …