Church Attendance, Social Capital, and Black Voting Participation*

Baodong Liu, Sharon D. Wright Austin and Byron D'Andrá Orey

Social Science Quarterly, 2009, vol. 90, issue 3, 576-592

Abstract: Objectives. We test the traditional studies of political participation that suggest enhanced education and income will help reduce the racial gap in voting. Methods. We adopt a Bayesian model to test the impact of education and income on both black and white racial groups. We also link the explanation of black voting participation to social capital. Results. We find that bonding and bridging social capital as well as human capital are all important in explaining white voting participation, but only bonding social capital, measured by church attendance, explained African‐American voting participation. Conclusions. We conclude that the utility of social capital theory and continuing significance of human capital theory must be considered in a racial context. In addition, our findings offer important implications about the continuing role of black churches for increasing social capital and political participation.

Date: 2009
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