Using Sermons to Study Religions’ Influence on Political Behavior

• DOI: 10.1177/0010414020957667
• Author: Gwyneth McClendon,Rachel Beatty Riedl
• Date: 01 April 2021
• Published date: 01 April 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414020957667

Comparative Political Studies

2021, Vol. 54(5) 779 –822

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0010414020957667

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Article

Using Sermons to Study

Religions’ Influence on

Political Behavior

Gwyneth McClendon1

and Rachel Beatty Riedl2

Abstract

The effects of religion on political behavior are difficult to study for a number

of reasons. One difficulty is that “religion” is not a singular entity and is

thus unlikely to have a unidirectional effect on political behavior. Another

difficulty is that everyone in a particular place and time might be embedded

in the same set of religious practices, such that the counterfactual is difficult

to assess. In response to these and other challenges, we suggest opening up

the black box of religion in order to examine the influence of its component

parts. Specifically, we focus on exposure to sermons. We describe a study

about the impact of Christian sermons in sub-Saharan Africa on reactions to

inequality. We discuss the approach’s advantages and limitations and discuss

how to integrate it with the study of other aspects of religion and how the

approach might apply to other domains of political behavior.

Keywords

religion and politics, African politics

Introduction

Religion as a category of analysis and object of study is multifaceted, inter-

nally heterogeneous, and lacks coherent boundaries. How then can we assess

its possible influence on political behavior? In many ways, the issues that

1New York University, New York, NY, USA

2Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Gwyneth McClendon, New York University, 19 West 4th Street, New York, NY 10012, USA.

Email: gwyneth.mcclendon@nyu.edu

957667CPSXXX10.1177/0010414020957667Comparative Political StudiesMcClendon and Beatty Riedl

research-article2020

780 Comparative Political Studies 54(5)

plague the study of religion’s influence on political behavior are a subset of

the issues that plague the study of cultural influences on political behavior

more generally. Culture encompasses “the meanings and values which arise

amongst distinctive social groups and classes. . . and the lived traditions and

practices through which those understandings are expressed and in which

they are embodied” (Hall, 1980, p. 63). Although scholars are often aware of

the difficulties of studying the influence of political culture, it is easy to fall

back on arguments characterized by essentialism, assuming implicitly or

explicitly that a particular group of people share a fixed set of values and

practices (Martin, 2018). However, “religion” is not a singular, unchanging

entity and is thus unlikely to have a single, unidirectional effect on political

behavior. And yet to investigate the causal influence of any particular reli-

gious tradition or experience on political behavior, one has to identify it, and

one has to identify instances in which people are subject to it as well as

instances that approximate the counterfactual (Paluck & Ricart-Huguet,

2017). Finally, one has to deal with the issue of self-selection: that adherents

might self-select into religious practices to which they are already politically

predisposed (Margolis, 2018), and thus religious belonging might simply

reflect (rather than cause) political behavior.

One way forward is to unbundle religions (and cultural systems more gen-

erally) into disaggregated parts.1 Within any given faith tradition, and across

its varied forms around the world, religion typically combines many different

elements: ideas about the spiritual and physical worlds, rituals and practices,

organizational resources, hierarchies, social networks, social identity catego-

ries, social insurance, service delivery and so on (Table 1). These component

parts are each likely to influence political behavior in different ways, and

they can sometimes be randomly assigned by nature or the researcher, allow-

ing scholars to circumvent concerns about self-selection. For instance, as-if

random processes (unexpected death) might alter the leadership of a particu-

lar house of worship, and thus its governance or service content (Tunón,

2017). Or, particular components of religion (its sermons, practices, associ-

ated social identities) might be brought into the lab and randomly assigned or

primed by researchers without stepping too far outside the bounds of what

would happen in the real world. Thus, disaggregating religion can provide

ways to approximate the counterfactual and to circumvent concerns about

self-selection. Disaggregating religion can also allow the researcher to

describe and situate the component parts of religion under study in a particu-

lar time and place without assuming religion is a monolith.

In this paper, we discuss a way to disaggregate religion that focuses on

sermons and their possible influence on political behavior. Exposure to ser-

mons is a regular and integral part of lay religious experience in many faith

781

Table 1. Examples of Disaggregating Religion.

Focus Example studies What is made more visible What is made less visible

Sermon

content

McClendon and Riedl (2019);

Toft etal. (2011); Weber (1934)

Ideational content of religion,

local lived experience and

interpretations of doctrine,

episodic exposure to ideas,

individual behavior

Inter-laity social interactions,

material resources, church

as institution, religion as

ritual, identity

Social

network

Djupe and Gilbert (2009); Durkheim

(1912); Lewis etal. (2013);

Wald etal. (1988);Wittenberg (2006)

Communal dynamics among

laity, social capital

Ideas, practice, hierarchy

Social

identity

Ben-Nun Bloom etal. (2015);

Cammett (2014); Dancygier (2017);

Margolis (2017); McCauley (2017);

McCauley and Posner (2019); Varshney

(2003); Wilkinson (2006)

Relations between religious

groups (e.g., cooperation,

animosity), connection to

ethnic politics literatures

Ideas, intra-group divisions,

religious marketplace

Organizing

skills

Brady etal. (1995); Campbell (2004);

Harris (1994); Jones-Correa and Leal

(2001)

Explicit political organizing,

social capital

Ideas, hierarchy, identity

Patron

linkages

Cammett and Issar (2010); Jennings (2014);

McCauley (2015); Thachil (2014)

Power dynamics within religious

institutions, connection to

clientelism literatures

Ideas, horizontal ties among

laity, ritual

(continued)