Strategically Prophetic Priests: An Analysis of Competing Principal Influence on Clergy Political Action

Abstract

We assess clergy political activism dynamics using data from a national survey of Roman Catholic priests. Like their elite counterparts in interest groups and other secular political institutions, clergy encounter expectations and demands from competing principals when determining how to publicly act on key political issues. Building on insights from decades of clergy politics scholarship, we leverage new perspectives of principal-based influence by examining how Catholic priest perception of both local parish finances and diocesan bishop expectations affect their reported political actions. Our findings are consistent with the notion that parish and bishop principals condition priest political behavior, controlling for priest ideology. However, priest political action proves more sensitive to parish financial concerns than bishop encouragement.

Reconsidering the Role of Politics in Leaving Religion: The Importance of Affiliation

“…Moreover, clergy's participation in high‐profile political activities was connected to a decline of mainline denominations (Hadden ; Quinley ; Roof and McKinney ; Wuthnow ; though see Hoge, Johnson, and Luidens ). This link is not limited to the 1960s—there is recent evidence that the financial health of a religious institution affects whether even Catholic priests address abortion politics (Calfano, Oldmixon, and Gray ).…”

The Influence of Institutional Salience on Political Attitudes and Activism among Catholic Priests in the United States

“…Since Catholic priests work at intersections with reference groups whose potential influence is borne out of priest's professional considerations, priests’ institutional superiors (e.g., bishops) and local congregations (i.e., parishioners) are potentially central in affecting priest survey response on political matters (Calfano ). For example, while bishops affect career advancement through parish and diocesan assignments, parishioners influence daily quality of priest life through their willingness to volunteer and/or donate to parish collections (Calfano, Oldmixon, and Gray ). Furthermore, Djupe and Gilbert () show that there is substantial intradenominational political diversity, which may make priest attitudes both incongruent with certain institutional constituencies and variable in their survey‐based expression.…”

“…The difficulty is that, while priests are bound to some extent by the Church's teachings, they may alienate parishioners on the right or left if they are too outspoken. Faced with this possibility, priests modulate their behavior (Calfano, Oldmixon, and Gray ). Thus, clergy behavior and preferences—or, for our purposes, the way priests characterize their behavior and preferences in survey response—may be sensitive to cognitive highlighting of these institutional realities.…”

The Effects of Descriptive Associational Leadership on Civic Engagement: The Case of Clergy and Gender in Protestant Denominations

“…Congregations constitute tiny publics that, at least, are not involved with society‐wide elections every few years and hence are not as subject to interference from the broader environment that might hamper inference. Clergy constitute an easily recognized source of representation and are not involved in a complex power‐sharing arrangement with other institutional leaders as elected officials are in the federal government (though see Calfano, Oldmixon, and Gray ). While members may not be aware of all that clergy do, it is unlikely that many know nothing about them as is common among citizens with respect to their elected representatives.…”

“…In the first place, many clergy, especially in the denominations that ordain women, are chosen with some sort of member input. Also, to protect their legitimacy, clergy must remain at least somewhat responsive to their constituencies; most clergy are forced to maintain the approval of their constituents for job retention, even in the most hierarchical of religious traditions (see Calfano, Oldmixon, and Gray ). Moreover, clergy regularly pursue activities that appear to represent the interests of their congregation in public (Crawford and Olson ; Djupe and Gilbert ; Olson ).…”