The gap between elite and popular beliefs varies systematically across religious traditions

Evidence

In China there is the phenomenon of the script, an expression of the complete separation between the intellectuals and the people. … In Protestant countries the difference is relatively slight (the proliferation of sects is connected with the need for a perfect suture between intellectuals and people, with the result that all the crudity of the effective conceptions of the popular masses is reproduced in the higher organisational sphere). It is more noteworthy in Catholic countries, but its extent varies. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 320

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s broader hegemony/intellectuals framework that the reader is scaffolding for the Islamophobia toolkit — the idea that the intellectuals-people suture is a variable to be measured.
• DEFINE: Introduces the intellectuals/people separation as an analytic dimension applicable to any social formation.