Billings - applies Gramsci’s ideas in a case study comparing class struggle in 2 communities (coal miners and textile workers in 1920s&1930s Kentucky). The miners were militant, whereas the textile workers accepted the status quo so he argued that it was a difference in religion. There’s 3 ways in which religion effects hegemony: leadership (the miners benefitted from the leadership of lay preachers who converted them to the union cause, textile workers lacked such leadership), organisation (the miners used independent churches, the textile workers lacked such spaces), and support (the churches kept miner’s morale high with supportive sermons, prayer meetings, and group singing, textile workers who engaged in union activity were met with opposition from local leaders). Therefore, religion can play ‘a prominent oppositional role’ (called upon either to defend the status quo or justify the struggle to change it).