Religiosity and Social Network Diversity: Decomposing the “Divided by Faith” Theoretical Framework

Objectives Our objective is to extend previous structural explanations of religious belonging and denominational variations concerning “closed communities” and the “divided by faith” thesis to the individual level by testing the effect of religious affiliation and church membership on levels of self‐reported social network diversity among a nationally representative sample. Methods Survey data from the Panel Study—American Religion and Ethnicity (PS‐ARE) were used to examine individual‐level variations in social network diversity. A multifaceted measure of diversity was decomposed to examine racial, gender, educational, and occupational variations in network diversity using a series of hierarchical linear models. Results Our results show that while previous structural explanations suggest that religious belonging is likely to lower the diversity of one's close social network at the individual level, the current findings indicate a positive relationship between religious membership and the diversity of one's close friendship network above and beyond the effects of denominational affiliation. Conclusions The results of the decomposition component analyses along with the hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) strategy highlight the relatively distinct role of race in understanding the differing dynamics associated with the many indicators of diversity and religious belonging.