A decision theory of clergy political behavior

Abstract

Studies of clergy political behavior have used one of two empirical lenses to explain clergy actions—ideology and contextual influences. The first lens generally supposes that clergy behave according to their sincerely held preferences; the second takes personal ideology into account, but suggests that clergy are also subject to influence from the environment in which they serve. While both approaches have received adequate attention, there has been no attempt to develop a systematic decision theory outlining when and why clergy might elect to follow their ideological preferences in some cases, and respond to contextual influence in others. This research note proposes a decision theory based on work in the congressional behavior scholarship. It outlines the conditions under which clergy use their sincere preferences and reference group cues to determine their political behavior. It then tests these propositions using data from two national surveys of American clergy.

Notes

1 The N for the total number of responses received is 841 (although the aggregate number may be lower depending on the variables included in given model). This consists of just over a 44% (N = 443) response rate for the PC (USA) clergy, and just under a 40% (N = 398) response rate for ECUSA. While arguably low by methodological standards, the PC (USA) rate exceeds both Weston's (2004) (PCUSA) and Djupe and Gilbert's (2003) (ECUSA) return (although Djupe and Gilbert used a much larger starting sample). I conducted comparison tests on respondent characteristics, and found no significant differences between respondents and the clergy population at large, as published by both denominations (PCUSA Research Services, 2002, 2004, 2006; Hadaway, 2006). Therefore, I have qualified confidence that the results below can be extrapolated to the clergy population in general. I concede, however, that the respondents may be biased in favor of political participation and survey response. However, this also means that any significant findings of behavior modification might arguably be given more weight because of an over inclusion of politically-inclined clergy in the analysis.