Navigating Class, Religion, and Education: Exploring Nigerian Christian Middle-Class Dynamics in Nigeria
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46445/djce.v6i1.983Keywords:
Nigerian middle class, Christian communities in Lagos, Religion and social mobility, Education and class reproductionAbstract
The Nigerian middle class has been the subject of extensive sociological inquiry, yet the intersection of religion, education, and social mobility within this group remains underexplored, particularly among Christian communities in Lagos State. This paper examines the historical and contemporary factors shaping the emergence and reproduction of the Nigerian Christian middle class. Drawing on existing studies, the analysis highlights the role of missionary education, familial strategies, and professional advancement in fostering upward mobility. The heterogeneity of Christian denominations, stratification within religious communities, and the role of gender and migration are explored to provide a nuanced understanding of how Nigerian Christians navigate social hierarchies. The study also identifies gaps in current research, emphasizing the need for focused empirical studies to unpack the complex interplay of religion, class, and education. Findings contribute to the broader discourse on the sociology of religion and middle-class identity formation in Nigeria.
References
Almquist, E. M. (1966). Social Class and Religiosity. The Kansas Journal of Sociology, 2(3), 90–99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23308511
Ammerman, N. T. (2020). Rethinking Religion: Toward a Practice Approach. American Journal of Sociology, 126(1), 6–51. https://doi.org/10.1086/709779
Artz, L. (2015). Global entertainment media: A critical introduction. John Wiley & Sons.
Atkinson, W. (2024). The class differentiation of older age: Capitals and lifestyles. The British Journal of Sociology, 75(4), 554–573. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.13112
Ayling, P. (2019). Whiteness: The Symbol of Quality Education in Contemporary Nigeria. In Distinction, Exclusivity and Whiteness (pp. 63–76). Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5781-7_5
Ball, S. J. (2003). Class Strategies and the Education Market. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203218952
Bartunek, J. M. (1984). Changing Interpretive Schemes and Organizational Restructuring: The Example of a Religious Order. Administrative Science Quarterly, 29(3), 355. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393029
Berry, S. (2023). Fathers work for their sons: accumulation, mobility, and class formation in an extended Yorùbá community. Univ of California Press.
Bosetti, L. (2004). Determinants of school choice: understanding how parents choose elementary schools in Alberta. Journal of Education Policy, 19(4), 387–405. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268093042000227465
Breidlid, A. (2020). Beyond the Western paradigm. In Indigenous Knowledges and the Sustainable Development Agenda (pp. 12–32). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367853785-2
Burges, S. E., & Chadwick, T. W. (1947). The Diary of Samuel Edward Burges, 1860-1862. The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, 48(2), 63–75. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27571919
Crompton, R. (2006). Class and Family. The Sociological Review, 54(4), 658–677. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2006.00665.x
Csordas, T. J. (1988). Elements of Charismatic Persuasion and Healing. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2(2), 121–142. https://doi.org/10.1525/maq.1988.2.2.02a00030
De Neve, G., & Donner, H. (2015). Revisiting Urban Property in India. Journal of South Asian Development, 10(3), 255–266. https://doi.org/10.1177/0973174115611760
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2009). Handbook Qualitative Research. Pustaka Pelajar.
Dickey, S. (2016). Living Class in Urban India. Rutgers University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1ch78w3
Dillabough, J. (2004). Class, culture and the ‘predicaments of masculine domination’: encountering Pierre Bourdieu. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(4), 489–506. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142569042000236970
Drønen, T. S. (2018). Christian Migrant Communities. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 30(3), 227–251. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341412
Ejimofor, C. O. (1971). The colonial roots of the Nigerian crisis: a study of British policies and administration in Nigeria. The University of Oklahoma.
Esther, H. S. C. (1995). Parent Involvement: A Comparison of Different Definitions and Explanations. Chinese University Education Journal, 23(1), 39–68.
Falola, T., & Heaton, M. M. (2008). A History of Nigeria. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819711
Garnett, N. S. (2010). Affordable private education and the middle class city. University of Chicago Law Review, 77(1), 201–222. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclrev/vol77/iss1/9
Giroux, H. (1983). Resistance in the New Sociology. Harvard Educational Review, 53(3), 257–294.
Goldthorpe, J. H. (2007). “Cultural Capital”: Some Critical observations. Sociologica, 1(2), 5–15.
Heiman, R. (2019). Driving after Class. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520960312
Hogan, A., & Thompson, G. (2017). Commercialization in Education. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.180
Horton, R. (1960). A Definition of Religion and Its Uses. Journal of Royak Anthropological Institute, 90.
Idumwonyi, I. M. (2018). An ethnographic study of gender dynamics in Benin religion and a Pentecostal congregation in Benin City, Nigeria. Rice University.
Jackson, T. (2008). Becoming King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the making of a national leader. University Press of Kentucky.
James, C. E., & Parekh, G. (2021). Fixed Trajectories: Race, Schooling, and Graduation from a Southern Ontario University. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 51(4), 67–84. https://doi.org/10.47678/cjhe.v51i4.189081
Jodhka, S. S. (2016). Ascriptive hierarchies: Caste and its reproduction in contemporary India. Current Sociology, 64(2), 228–243. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392115614784
Jodhka, S. S., & Prakash, A. (2016). The Indian Middle Class. Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-indian-middle-class-9780199466795?cc=id&lang=en&
Jones, B. (1975). Max Weber and the Concept of Social Class. The Sociological Review, 23(4), 729–757. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1975.tb00538.x
Kaplan, S. (1986). The Africanization of Missionary Christianity: History and Typology. Journal of Religion in Africa, 16(3), 166–186. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006686X00128
Koehrsen, J. (2017). Boundary Bridging Arrangements: A Boundary Work Approach to Local Energy Transitions. Sustainability, 9(3), 424. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9030424
Lareau, A. (2000). Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Lareau, A. (2001). Linking Bourdieu’s concept of capital to the broader field: The case of family-school relationships. In Social class, poverty and education (1st ed., pp. 77–100). Routledge.
Lewis, P. (2009). Growing apart: Oil, politics, and economic change in Indonesia and Nigeria. University of Michigan Press.
Lleras, C. (2008). Hostile School Climates: Explaining Differential Risk of Student Exposure to Disruptive Learning Environments in High School. Journal of School Violence, 7(3), 105–135. https://doi.org/10.1080/15388220801955604
Macleod, S. (2007, January). Saddam’s Hanging Reverberates Through the Middle East. TIME. https://time.com/archive/6939951/saddams-hanging-reverberates-through-the-middle-east/
McCloud, S. (2007). Putting Some Class into Religious Studies: Resurrecting an Important Concept. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 75(4), 840–862. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfm068
McGillicuddy, D., & Devine, D. (2018). “Turned off” or “ready to fly” – Ability grouping as an act of symbolic violence in primary school. Teaching and Teacher Education, 70, 88–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.11.008
Merriam, S. B., & Grenier, R. S. (2019). Qualitative Research in Practice: Examples for Discussion and Analysis (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Mulcare, R. S. (2020). Challenging the dominant discourse of young people from low socioeconomic backgrounds: social mobility, aspirations and the role of intersectionality (Issue June) [University of Birmingham]. https://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/10897/
Ncube, M., & Lufumpa, C. (Eds.). (2014). The Emerging Middle Class in Africa. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315757896
Ndukwe, O. (2008). Christian faith and social transformation: John Howard Yoder’s social ethics as lens for revisioning the ecclesiological identity of the South Central Synod (SCS) of the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria (The PCN). Stellenbosch University.
Nevill, T., Savage, G. C., & Forsey, M. (2023). It’s a diagnosis for the rich: disability, advocacy and the micro-practices of social reproduction. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 44(2), 239–258. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2022.2145931
Norris, C. (2005). From personal to digital: CCTV, the panopticon, and the technological mediation of suspicion and social control. In D. Lyon (Ed.), Surveilance as Social Sorting (privacy, risk, and digital discrimitation) (Vol. 1, pp. 249–281). Rouledge.
Nunn, A., & Tepe-Belfrage, D. (2019). Social reproduction strategies: Understanding compound inequality in the intergenerational transfer of capital, assets and resources. Capital & Class, 43(4), 617–635. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309816819880795
Obasi, C. O., & Nnamani, R. G. (2015). The Role of Umuada Igbo in Conflict Management and Development in Nigeria. Open Journal of Political Science, 05(04), 256–263. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojps.2015.54027
Phillips, D. R. J. P. (2018). Evaluating Contemporary Protestant Missions to Children at Risk in South India: Investigating Foundations and Principles for Future Christian Mission. School of Divinity, The University of Edinburgh.
Pope, W. (1973). Classic on Classic: Parsons’ Interpretation of Durkheim. American Sociological Review, 38(4), 399. https://doi.org/10.2307/2094211
Power, S., Edwards, T., Whitty, G., & Wigfall, V. (2003). Education and the Middle Class. British Journal of Educational Studies, 51(4).
Reinoso, A. O. (2008). Middle-Class Families and School Choice: Freedom versus Equity in the Context of a ‘local Education Market.’ European Educational Research Journal, 7(2), 176–194. https://doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2008.7.2.176
Rieger, I. A. (2023). Popular Religion or Lived Religion? Exploring Indigenous Religious Festival Practice in Mexico. International Journal of Latin American Religions, 7(1), 124–146. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41603-023-00191-z
Robertson, S., & Roberts, R. (2022). Rethinking Privilege and Social Mobility in Middle-Class Migration. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003087588
Robinson, R. (2003). Christians of India. Sage.
Roth, G., & Schluchter, W. (1984). Max Weber’s vision of history: Ethics and methods. Univ of California Press.
Santana, C. H. V., & Ferrario, M. N. (2022). Middle classes and the rise of authoritarian populist rulers: A comparison between contemporary Brazil and India. Virtual Congress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), May, 1–46.
Stark, R. (1986). The Class Basis of Early Christianity: Inferences from a Sociological Model. Sociological Analysis, 47(3), 216. https://doi.org/10.2307/3711376
Syamprasad, K. . (2019). Merit and caste as cultural capital: Justifying affirmative action for the underprivileged in Kerala, India K.V Syamprasad University of Winchester, Winchester, UK. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 17(3), 50–81. http://www.jceps.com/archives/7043
Tuğal, C. (2015). Elusive revolt: The contradictory rise of middle-class politics. Thesis Eleven, 130(1), 74–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513615602183
Tzanakis, M. (2011). Bourdieu’s social reproduction thesis and the role of cultural capital in educational attainment: A critical review of key empirical studies. Educate~, 11(1), 76–90. http://www.educatejournal.org/index.php/educate/article/view/251
Uchem, R. (2003). Overcoming Women’s Subordination in The Igbo African Culture and in the Catholic Church. Annual Journal of Women for Women International, 1(1), 32–35. http://www.iiav.nl/ezines/email/CriticalHalf/2003/No1.pdf
Uzochukwu, B. S., Okeke, C. C., Ogwezi, J., Emunemu, B., Onibon, F., Ebenso, B., Mirzoev, T., & Mir, G. (2021). Exploring the drivers of ethnic and religious exclusion from public services in Nigeria: implications for sustainable development goal 10. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 41(5/6), 561–583. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSSP-02-2020-0036
Vincent, C., & Ball, S. J. (2007). `Making Up’ the Middle-Class Child: Families, Activities and Class Dispositions. Sociology, 41(6), 1061–1077. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038507082315
Weber, M. (1930). Wissenschaft als Beruf. In (Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen und Reden zur Philosophie, Politik und Geistesgeschichte (pp. 752–761). Duncker & Humblot. https://doi.org/10.17104/9783406660764-752
Weber, M. (2013). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Merchant Books.
Yang, L. (2023). Constructing Early English as a Foreign Language Education in China: A Case Study of Parents’ Choices in a Changing Educational Context. University of Newcastle, Australia.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Charles Berebon
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
An author who publishes in Didache: Journal of Christian Education agrees to the following terms:
- Author retains the copyright and grants the journal the right of first publication of the work simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal
- Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book) with the acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Author is permitted and encouraged to post his/her work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of the published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
