ABSTRACT
Societies vary in how clearly their stratification systems are divided into classes and castes, but all large societies possess substantial socioeconomic inequality. Gastonia, North Carolina, was divided into mill owners and mill workers, with farmers, shopkeepers, and professionals standing to some extent on the sidelines of class conflict. Following the ideas of sociologist Benton Johnson, expressed early in the second half of the century, it is useful to arrange religious groups along a dimension of their degree of tension with the surrounding sociocultural environment. All forms of religion offer general compensators, which are promises to be taken on faith that extremely general and valuable rewards will be forthcoming if a person adheres to the sacred norms. In addition, high-tension religious movements within the standard tradition of the society tend to offer specific compensators that substitute for wealth, power, and status. In so doing they attract a membership who disproportionately suffer relative deprivation with respect to other citizens of the society.
