Polity and Politics: How the Structures of Religious Organizations Influence Political Behaviors

Abstract

Congregations are the point of contact between most adherent Americans and their larger religious groups, with pastors serving as the voice of authority with the most day-to-day contact with members on matters of faith. Focusing on American Christian denominations, this dissertation explores how congregations serve to influence political behavior between members’ affiliations, their politics, and how they are influenced by their congregational setting. Additionally, this project introduces a new framework for assessing denominations in relation to their pastoral appointment systems. Data for this work consists of exit poll data on over 600 voters from a 2014 civil rights ordinance recall election in Fayetteville, Arkansas. To assess the influence of appointment practices on the relationship between clergy and their congregations, Cooperative Clergy Study Project data is used, coding denominations by their appointment practices. Finally, church census data provided by the General Council on Finance and Administration for The United Methodist Church details changes in membership at the congregation level in the over 30,000 United Methodist congregations in the United States from 2009-2018, giving over 300,000 church-year observations. Findings indicate that composition is strongly related to the influence of a congregation on individual political decision-making. Additionally, more homogeneous congregations appear more likely to join groups with political salience and undertake ministries that more heterogeneous congregations are unwilling to carry out. Importantly, appointment practices and tenure appear to significantly influence composition as congregations that select their own pastors have significantly higher cohesion compared to those where a pastor is appointed, and pastoral tenure further increases cohesion. Together with the finding that pastoral change has a significant relationship with turnover of members, these findings suggest that the effect of pastors on the composition of their congregations, rather than persuasion of existing members, constitutes a significant amount of their influence on members and congregations.