Hearing Clergy Speak About Social and Political Issues: Examining the Effects of Religious Tradition and Personal Interest

Christopher P. Scheitle and Nicole Cornell

Social Science Quarterly, 2015, vol. 96, issue 1, 148-160

Abstract: type="main">

The goal of this research is to identify factors that affect the likelihood that a congregational attendee will report hearing their clergyperson speak about certain social or political issues.

The data used for this research come from the 2010 Religion and Public Life Survey. We examine three outcomes measuring whether the respondent reports hearing his or her clergy speak about abortion, homosexuality, or the environment.

We find that an individual's personal interest in particular social issues increases the likelihood of reporting hearing about those issues from his or her clergyperson. There are also significant religious tradition effects, with Catholics being most likely to report hearing about abortion.

These findings shed light on what congregational attendees say they are hearing from their clergy about key social and political issues, which could be very different from what clergy report they are saying, as attendees’ reports will be shaped by their attention to, interest in, and interpretation of the clergy's messages.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ssqu.12139 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:socsci:v:96:y:2015:i:1:p:148-160

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0038-4941

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science Quarterly is currently edited by Robert L. Lineberry

More articles in Social Science Quarterly from Southwestern Social Science Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().