The Political Activity of Evangelical Clergy in the Election of 2000: A Case Study of Five Denominations

Abstract

This article focuses on the political participation of ministers from five evangelical Protestant denominations that differ in theology, polity, and history. Despite such differences, these clergy respond to political influences in much the same fashion. We find that the standard theories of political participation have varying success in accounting for their political involvement. Sociodemographic explanations provide little help, but psychological engagement with politics has more explanatory power. Professional role orientations are the best predictors of actual participation. And the clergy who see moral reform issues as the most important confronting the country—and who hold conservative views on such issues—are most likely to become engaged. Finally, membership in Christian Right organizations serves to elicit more activity than might occur if ministers were left to internally motivated participation. Despite the emphasis on other contextual variables in some work on clerical politics, we find that communications exposures, congregational influences, and even the support of clerical colleagues have very limited independent effects on political involvement.

Bridging Religion and Politics: The Impact of Providential Religious Beliefs on Political Activity

“…A dummy variable is not included for Evangelical Protestants. Although the literature suggests that Evangelical Protestants may be more likely to be politically active, particularly when mobilized by congregation leaders (Guth et al 2003;Campbell 2004), the n for Evangelicals in this sample is simply too small and the sample population is not statistically distinguishable from Catholics or Mormons.…”

Civic Engagement and Religious Activities: Examining the Influence of Religious Tradition and Participation

“…Gallup recruited participants by telephone and then mailed the survey. Of the individuals 3 Previous studies were often limited by data on only specific churches (Becker and Dhingra 2001;Brewer et al 2003;Greenberg 2000;Edgell and Docka 2007;Verba et al 1995), quantitative studies with small samples (Guth et al 2003;Williams 2002), single variables of religious attendance (Houghland and Christenson 1983), a single denomination (Uslaner 2002), a single city (Glanville 2004), or dichotomous variables of volunteerism (Park and Smith 2000). Nevertheless, these studies are informative and suggestive.…”

“…Churches were an instigating force for both civic engagement and social movements such as Civil Rights (Beyerlein and Hipp 2006;Calhoun-Brown 1996;Greenberg 2000;Williams 2002) and, more recently, Christian conservatism (Green et al 2001;Guth et al 2003;Hoover et al 2002;Hopson and Smith 1999). Clergy and religious leaders can send messages to civically mobilize church members (Brewer et al 2003;Janoski et al 1998;Wuthnow 1988) and organizational skills learned in the church can extend to subsequent civic engagement (Jones-Correa and Leal 2001;Uslaner 2002;Verba et al 1995;Wilson and Musick 1999).…”

Prophetic at Any Price? Clergy Political Behavior and Utility Maximization*

“…The first focuses on ideology. As typified by Guth et al (1997) (see also Guth et al, 2003;Smidt et al, 2003), clergy are assumed to have particular ideological preferences that are closely associated with the denomination or tradition in which they serve. As such, mainline Protestant ministers are expected to encourage greater political liberalism among their parishioners than, say, evangelical pastors.…”