Clergy Political Actions and Agendas: New Findings from the National Survey of Religious Leaders

ABSTRACT

We use the National Survey of Religious Leaders (NSRL) to extend prior research on clergy’s political activism and agendas. We find that christian clergy engage in political cue giving at similar rates across religious traditions, though evangelical clergy are less likely than other clergy to engage in direct action. Regarding issue priorities, evangelical clergy focus almost exclusively on a moral reform agenda, with a particular focus on abortion. Both mainline Protestant and Black Protestant clergy often address a social justice agenda, but Black Protestant clergy tend to focus more on community empowerment while mainline Protestant clergy tend to pursue social justice activism that seeks to transcend class and national boundaries. Catholic clergy are more likely than others to advance a wide range of issues. Taken together, these findings update and extend our knowledge about clergy political activities, broadening the traditional two-agenda characterization of clergy political agendas into a four-agenda account.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Specifically, when conducting analysis on weighted data we used the variable WT_NSRL_PRIMARY_DUP that limits analysis to just primary leaders and weighs cases inversely proportionate to the number of regularly attending adults at their congregation. For more details, consult Chaves, Roso, and Holleman (2022) and the NSRL codebook and documentation available at the Association of Religious Data Archives: https://www.thearda.com/data-archive?fid=NSRL.

² Among predominantly white Protestant denominations, the mainline-conservative/evangelical distinction captures differences in views about the Bible and attitudes about adapting religious traditions to cultural change. Mainline denominations such as the United Methodist Church, Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, and Christian Church (Disciplines of Christ) are more liberal in these areas by interpreting the Bible in light of the historical and social conditions in which it was written and expressing openness to other religions and the secular world. Evangelical/conservative denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies of God, Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and most nondenominational Christian congregations are more conservative in these areas by interpreting the Bible literally and viewing other religions and secular institutions as targets of conversion rather than as partners in efforts to make a better world.

³ The pairs of indicators with correlated residuals are capital punishment and abortion, gun laws and abortion, race relations and LGBT issues, abortion and LGBT issues, hunger or poverty and economic issues, and race relations and police-community relations.

⁴ Appendix Table A1 provides the exact values behind Figure 1.

⁵ When the Catholic outlier case is included, the percentage of Catholics who lobbied an elected official increased to 55 percent.

⁶ Appendix Table A2 provides the exact values behind Figure 2.

⁷ Including the outlier Catholic case increases the percent of Catholic leaders active on immigration and hunger or poverty to 79 percent and 71 percent, respectively.

⁸ When the outlier case is included, Catholic clergy have close to average activism on race relations (52 percent of politically active Catholic leaders) and police-community relations (43 percent).

⁹ Appendix Table A3 provides the full set of fit statistics.

¹⁰ Appendix Table A4 provides the exact values behind Figure 4.

¹¹ An LCA model constrained to only three classes combined these third and fourth classes into a single social justice agenda. The vast majority of clergy sorted into either of the social justice classes in the four-class model were placed in the combined social justice class in the three-class model.

¹² Appendix Table A5 provides the exact percentages behind Figure 5.

¹³ When including the single Catholic case with very large weight, Catholic leaders are statistically significantly more likely to be categorized as Universally Engaged than clergy in any other tradition.

Additional information

Funding

The National Survey of Religious Leaders (NSRL) was funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Data were gathered by NORC at the University of Chicago. The NSRL dataset and codebook are available from the Association of Religion Data Archives (https://www.thearda.com/data-archive?fid=NSRL) and from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/ICPSR/studies/38576). The codebook also is available at the NSRL website (https://www.nationalsurveyreligiousleaders.org/).

Notes on contributors

Joseph Roso

Joseph Roso is a assistant professor of sociology at Ambrose University. His research examines trends in the culture and politics of American religious congregations and congregational leaders. His work has been published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion Review of Religious Research, Sociology of Religion, and Politics and Religion.

Mark Chaves

Mark Chaves is Anne Firor Scott Distinguished Professor of Sociology, and Professor of Religious Studies and Divinity, at Duke University. Much of his research focuses on the social organization of religion. He directs the National Congregations Study (NCS), a wide-ranging survey of a nationally representative sample of religious congregations, and also the National Survey of Religious Leaders, a similarly wide-ranging survey of leaders of congregations that participated in the fourth wave of the NCS.

Turgut Keskintürk

Turgut Keskintürk is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Duke University. His research explores the formation and organization of cultural, political, and moral belief systems. His work has appeared in Poetics and Social Science Research.