Wald et al. - Churches as Political Communities



Churches possess many of the characteristics that should maximize behavioral contagion and are thus fertile ground for the dissemination of political outlooks. The study says that the theological climate in the churches is found to contribute strongly to the members’ political conservatism over and above the personal commitment of respondents to traditional Christian values and a variety of social and attitudinal variables.



Churches as Contexts
At a minimum, a contextual effect would seem to require (1) the communication of political messages and (2) opportunities for members to observe that reactions of fellow members to these messages and to bring their own behavior into conformity with them. Churches clearly have these capacity and exercise it to varying extents.



Theologically conservative churches tend to be politically conservative.

There are big self-selection problems here, but the challenge is: is it the individual’s theology or the theology of the individual’s congregation that most effectively links the domains of religion and politics? The authors say that the congregation indeed matters.

Data and Methods
Questionnaires administered to members of protestant churches in Gainesville. On site. Quite anthropological.



Dependent Variables

Two measures of political conservatism – (1) a composite scale of preferences on public issues with a moral dimension, (2) a general measure of ideological self-definition common in the literature – picking from a list of eight phrases the one lable that best describes their liberality/conservatism.

Theological Conservatism

This is incredibly hard to study, but the authors create some index of theological conservatism. Scores were collected for individuals and an average was generating within each church – personal theology and congregational theology.

Results of Analysis
Mean church theology is a strong predictor of moral conservatism at the congregational level and a weaker though still ok predictor on self-designation as a conservative at the congregational level. Increases in church-level theological conservatism produced the predicted conservatizing influence. The same holds true when looking at congregational theology’s influence on moral conservatism and identity at the individual level.



But you could make the case that it is theology at the individual level that is more important than at the congregational level. Indeed, personal theology also proved a strong and significant predictor of individuals’ political conservatism.

Authors try to get around this problem with a statistical technique from Boyd and Iversen. Establish that the theological climate of opinion in the church has a greater impact than personal theologian promoting political conservatism among church members.

The Specter of Confounding Effects
Analysis so far demonstrates that personal religious conservatism and church conservatism both contribute significantly to individual political conservatism.



But there are lots of potentially confounding individual variables. The authors simply have to try to control these away, using controls for measures of modernization and partisanship. They do this, and still find that membership in a theologically conservative church enhances commitment to traditional social values and tends, to a lesser degree, to push a person towards more conservative self-identified ideologies. Membership is at least as powerful a predictor as several other social traits.

“This finding, together with the even stronger pattern for moral conservatism, seems to confirm that churches function as political communities by promoting attitudinal consensus: the more conservative the congregation theologically, the more strongly individuals within it adopt conservative political positions.

<p class="MsoNormal">The Self Selection Hypothesis

<p class="MsoNormal">Churches do promote distinct political orientations. Other things being equal, a theologically conservative individual belonging to a theologically conservative church is more likely to develop a conservative political outlook than an equally traditionalist Protestant who belongs to a church whose members are less conservative on theological issues.

<p class="MsoNormal">What about self selection? Maybe political liberals select churches with liberal political reputations. The authors cannot test this directly, but they have a response: looking at their data, there is limited congruence between the theological orientations of the individuals and denominations to which they belong. People don’t seem to be very good at intentionally choosing churches that are based on their theology. People don’t seem to be self-selecting churches based on their theological views. So, say the authors, if people don’t select churches on the basis of theology, surely they don’t select churches on the basis of politics. “In the hierarchy of factors that determine religious affiliation, it is likely that political compatibility ranks below theology and the social factors that determine religious affiliation.

Discussion
<p class="MsoNormal">There is a strong association between the predominant theological temper within congregations and the political views maintained by church members. It suggests the need to redirect inquiry on religion and politics from an individualist perspective toward models that stress the formative influence of the immediate religious environment.

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<p class="MsoNormal"> The discovery that individual churches promote political homogeneity consistent with their dominant theological orientation has serious implications for contemporary US political life. your page here.