Subordinate groups adopt vague spiritual equality as psychological compensation for status loss

Evidence

Another device for dealing with subordination in a society where invidious comparison with others is constantly invited represents, in effect, a borrowing from an older classical or religious tradition—an emphasis upon the intangible and immeasurable (and therefore comfortingly vague) spiritual and moral qualities. The only clearly adequate expression of this religious view was given by McNamara, a gentle and compassionate book-keeper, who said “All men are created equal? That’s our belief as Catholics,” implying some sort of religious equality, perhaps such an idea as is captured in the phrase “equality of the soul.” Woodside, a Protestant policeman, takes, in a way, a secular 18th Century version of this view when he says that men are equal “not financially, not in influence, but equal to one another as to being a person.” Being a person, then, is enough to qualify for equal claims of some undefined kind. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2194

Categorization

• DEFINE: Identifies a distinct psychological coping device for subordination: retreating to intangible, immeasurable ‘spiritual’ equality when material competition is lost.
• XREF: Connects to theories of system justification and compensatory legitimation — subordinates accepting inequality by relocating equality to a transcendent, non-comparable domain. — connects to: Religion offers oppressed groups a mirage of transcendence as compensation for immanence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1765
• ADDENDUM: Parallels the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ piece’s theme of class/identity signaling — here religion replaces status markers with unverifiable spiritual claims.