research note why are synagogues more politically active...

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Research note

Why are synagogues more politically active than other religious congregations?

Comparisons and explanations from the National Congregations Study

Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz, PhD

Senior Director, Research and Analysis

Director, Berman Jewish DataBank

The Jewish Federations of North America

Presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Annual Conference

5 May 2019

Chicago, IL

I. Introduction

American Jews are well-known for their generally liberal political preferences, and the attempt

to explain those preferences has been the master theme dominating the study of American

Jewish politics (Fuchs 1956; Sprinrad 1990; Katznelson 1995; Liebman and Cohen 1990; Forman

2001; Liebman 1973; Medding 1977; Lipset and Raab 1995; Levey 1996; Greenberg and Wald

2001; Wald 2015, 2019; Rebhun 2016). In contrast, the study of the political participation of

American Jews has lagged behind. Some scholars have examined American Jews’

disproportionately high rates of voter registration, turnout and political donations (Smith 2005;

Greenberg and Wald 2001). Others have analyzed the political activity of Jewish organizations

with specific mandates to engage in politics, including community relations, advocacy and

lobbying organizations (Elazar 1995, Waxman 2016; Chanes 2001). However, little if any

attention has been given to the political participation of synagogues, American Jews’ primary

religious institutions, even as scholars have begun turning their attention to the political activity

within other religious congregations (Beyerlein and Chaves 2003; Brown 2006; Wald and

Calhoun-Brown 2014).

This research note seeks to contribute to the knowledge of American Jewish political

participation by using data from the National Congregations Study (Chaves, Anderson and Eagle

2014) to compare the political activity of synagogues and congregations from other religious

traditions. It first documents that synagogues are more likely than other congregations to

undertake political activity. It then attempts to explain this difference in levels of political

participation by positing a series of hypotheses with predictors that account for variation in the

political activity of religious congregations in general, including congregational resources,

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theology, political orientation, a proxy variable for connections to other congregations, and an

underlying propensity for congregational activity. Crosstabulations show synagogues

disproportionately possess these predictors compared to other congregations, and a series of

bivariate regression models demonstrate how these predictors reduce, but do not fully

eliminate, the increased likelihood of synagogues to participate in politics. Put differently, the

predictors offer a partial explanation of why synagogues are more politically active than other

congregations, but a residual gap between synagogues and other congregations remains.

Several potential explanations for the residual gap are then offered. A concluding section

discusses implications of the analysis for religion and politics generally and for the political

bases of Jewish cohesion in the United States specifically.

II. The National Congregations Study

The National Congregations Study cumulative data file combines three cross-sectional surveys

of US religious congregations conducted in 1998, 2006 and 2012. Each cross-section started

with that year’s respective General Social Survey respondents, who, if they belonged to a

religious congregation, were asked to report contact information for it. Subsequent interviews

were then conducted with clergy at named congregations, yielding a representative sample of

congregations. Weights on the data file allow researchers to analyze data at the congregational

level (these weights adjust for differences in the probability of being in the sample due to

differences in congregation size) or at the individual congregant level. This analysis operates at

the congregational level, and reported findings use a congregational-level weight. Details of

the sampling procedure, known as hyper-network sampling, and weights are provided in

Chaves, Anderson and Eagle (2014).

The cumulative file contains a total of 4,071 congregations, comprised of 1,897 evangelical

Protestant churches (46.6%), 891 mainline Protestant churches (21.9%), 254 Roman Catholic

churches (6.2%), 832 black Protestant churches ( 20.4%), 54 Jewish synagogues (1.3%), and 142

other non-Christian congregations (3.5%).1 The small number of Jewish synagogues in the

congregational sample reflects, of course, the small share of the American adult population that

is Jewish by religion, estimated at about 1.8% (Pew Research Center 2013; another .5% of

American adults identify as Jewish for ethnic, cultural or other reasons, but they are less likely

to belong to synagogues than Jews by religion). Though the small number of synagogues in the

sample suggests results should be interpreted with some caution, synagogues are so different

from other congregations that the small sample size does not preclude robust statistical

findings.

1 Religious traditions were coded by the data file producers.

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III. The political activity of congregations: comparing synagogues and other congregations

The NCS data file contains nine dichotomous measures of congregational political activity, all

asked in each cross-sectional survey. Eight of the nine refer to activity in the 12 months prior to

the respective survey; the measure of voter guides, in contrast, had no time reference in the

1998 survey and a two-year reference in the 2006 and 2012 surveys. The nine measures are as

follows:

1. People at worship services told of opportunities for political activity, including petition

campaigns, lobbying, or demonstrating

2. Any groups, meetings, classes or events specifically to discuss politics

3. Any groups, meetings, classes or events specifically to organize or participate in efforts

to lobby elected officials of any sort

4. Any groups, meetings, classes or events specifically to get out the vote during an

election

5. Any groups, meetings, classes or events specifically to organize or participate in a

demonstration or march, either in support of or opposition to some public issue or

policy

6. Any groups, meetings, classes or events specifically to get people registered to vote

7. Any elected official visiting the congregation to give a talk at a meeting, event or

worship service

8. Anyone running for office visiting the congregation to give a talk at a meeting, event or

worship service

9. Voter guides distributed through the congregation

When the dichotomous measures are summed to construct a 0-9 scale (alpha =. 70), more than

half of all congregations (55.9%) reported no political activity at all, 18.7% reported 1 activity,

11.9% reported two activities, and 13.5% reported 3 or more activities, with an ever-

diminishing number as the scale climbs to all nine activities. To simplify this analysis, the scale

was recoded into a dichotomy distinguishing those congregations that engaged in one or more

of the nine political activities (44.1%) from those that did not engage in any political activity

(55.9%).

Table 1 presents the percentage of congregations from each religious tradition that engaged in

at least one political activity. Altogether, 44% of congregations report at least one political

activity, with a range from 33% for other non-Christian congregations at the low end to 87% for

synagogues at the high end. Difference of means tests show statistically significant differences

in political activity between synagogues and the congregations of each of the other religious

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traditions, and a post-hoc test of homogenous subsets shows one grouping of evangelical

Protestant churches, mainline Protestant churches and other non-Christian congregations, a

second grouping of Roman Catholic and black Protestant churches, and a third group of

synagogues by themselves (results not displayed).

(Table 1 about here)

IV. Predictors of political activity of congregations

Why are synagogues more likely than other congregations to participate in political activity? To

begin answering this question, five hypotheses that explain variation in the political

participation of congregations in general are offered in this section, along with empirical

indicators of the hypotheses’ predictors in the NCS cumulative data file. Religious

congregations may vary in their political participation for the following reasons:

1. Congregations with more resources, both human and financial, are more likely to engage in

political activity than congregations with fewer resources (Brown 2006). In this analysis,

resources are measured by the number of adults regularly involved in religious activities,

the number of full-time staff in congregations, and congregational income.

2. Congregations that are politically conservative or liberal are more likely to engage in politics

than congregations that are politically moderate. This argument is an extension of

individual-level theories and empirical findings that stronger ideological positions - on both

the left and right - lead to increased political participation, as people with stronger

ideologies are more motivated or incentivized to change or maintain the status quo than

centrists are (van der Meer et al 2009; Putnam 2000; Pew Research Center 2014). Political

orientations are measured by respondents’ placement of their congregations, politically

speaking, as more on the conservative side, right in the middle, or more on the liberal side.

3. Congregations with liberal and moderate theological orientations are more likely to be

politically active than those with conservative theological orientations. This is an extension

of findings connecting liberal and moderate theological traditions to civic engagement

broadly (Chaves 2004; Chaves, Stephens and Galaskiewicz 2004), but here theological

orientations are measured distinctly from religious traditions. Specifically, theological

orientations are measured by respondents’ placement of their congregations, theologically

speaking, as more on the conservative side, right in the middle, or more on the liberal side.

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4. Congregations with more extensive connections to other religious traditions are more likely

to participate in politics relative to congregations with fewer such connections. As with

political ideology, this explanation is an extension of individual-level theories and empirical

findings, in this case tying more diverse social networks to greater information flows and

increased political participation (Kotler-Berkowitz 2005; Granovetter 1973). No direct

measure of connections to other religious traditions was asked in all three NCS cross-

sections. Instead, a proxy measure identifying congregations that met in the past year to

learn about another tradition is used, under the assumption that learning about another

tradition likely entails some contact with a congregation or representative of that tradition.

5. Congregations that have more activity in general are more likely to be politically engaged

than congregations with less activity in general. Here, political activity is the byproduct of

an underlying disposition or culture of congregational activity. Following Chaves, Stephens

and Galaskiewicz’s measurement strategy (2004), this underlying disposition is measured

with factors scores extracted from a factor analysis of 10 variables that capture

congregational program activity.2

V. The potential advantages of synagogues in political participation

Comparing synagogues to congregations from other religious traditions shows synagogues

disproportionately possess the predictors hypothesized to account for congregational political

participation. Starting with resources in Table 2, synagogues have comparatively more

congregational income and full-time paid staff than other congregations, especially churches in

the three Protestant traditions. In turn, only a quarter of synagogues have more than 200

adults regularly active in congregational religious life, but even this low share trails only Roman

Catholic churches. These statistics reasonably reflect the nature of most Conservative and

Reform synagogues, which tend to large membership bases that allow for high congregational

income and multi-person staffs and, concomitantly, a small share of regularly active members.


Turning to other predictors, Table 3 shows synagogues are the most liberal in their political

orientations and evangelical Protestant churches are the most conservative, with both having

the fewest politically moderate congregations. In contrast, the other traditions have more

politically moderate congregations and fewer on the conservative and liberal sides. Synagogues

2 The factor analysis included programs focused on feeding the hungry; the homeless or transient; homebuilding,

repair or maintenance; physical health needs; jobs; disaster relief; clothing or blankets; education or training; senior citizens; and immigrants, migrants and refugees.

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are also the most theologically liberal, far outstripping congregations for the four Christian

traditions. In addition, synagogues outpace all other congregations in discussing or learning

about other religious traditions, the proxy measure for social ties to other traditions.


Lastly, Table 4 shows synagogues have the highest mean scores on three of the four factor

scores measuring congregational activity, indicating a generally stronger underlying disposition

for program activity than other congregations. However, synagogues’ negative mean score on

factor 2 indicate this is not always the case.


Given the relative advantage that synagogues possess with respect to these characteristics, it is

not surprising that the level of political participation among synagogues is the highest of the

religious traditions examined here, but the connection is only implicit so far. The paper now

turns to explicitly connecting congregations, their characteristics and political activity through

multivariate analysis.

VI. The difference in political participation between synagogues and other congregations,

partially explained

Conventionally, multivariate regression is used to test the relative explanatory power of various

predictors net of each other. Here, though, the analytic strategy is somewhat different. A

baseline logistic regression model enters religious traditions as the only predictor of

congregational political activity to determine initial differences across traditions, with a

particular focus on synagogues. Successive regression models then enter the other

hypothesized predictors of congregational political participation, revealing how much the other

predictors reduce, and thereby account for, initial differences between congregations from

distinct religious traditions, again with a focus on synagogues. The process ends with a full

model that includes all the hypothesized predictors of interest and additional control variables.

Table 5 displays the logistic regression models. Model 1 is the baseline model with religious

tradition, a categorical variable, entered as the only predictor. Evangelical Protestant

congregations are the reference category. The cell entries for the congregations from other

traditions are odds ratios (not the underlying regression coefficients).3 Mainline Protestant

3 Odds are the probability of an event happening over the probability of it not happening. Odds ratios are the odds

of the event happening for one category of the predictor variable relative to the odds of it happening for the

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congregations and other non-Christian congregations are no more likely to engage in political

activity than evangelical Protestant congregations. The odds of black Protestant and Roman

Catholic churches participating in politics are, respectively, are two and more than three times

the odds of evangelical Protestant churches. Synagogues are the most likely to undertake

political activity, with their odds of engaging in political activity almost 10 times that of

evangelical churches. With only religious tradition in the model, Nagelkerke’s pseudo R-square

stands at just .06.

Model 2 adds the three resource predictors, congregational income, full-time paid staff and

number of adults regularly active in the congregation’s religious life. Each has the expected

effect: increases in income, staff and active members raise the odds of political activity.

Turning to the religious traditions, mainline Protestant and non-Christian congregations remain

no more likely to engage in political activity than evangelical churches. The odds of black

Protestant congregation’s undertaking political activity increase after accounting for resources,

indicating that black Protestant churches’ advantage over evangelical churches in the baseline

model 1 is restricted by the relatively fewer resources black churches have compared to

evangelical churches. In contrast, the odds ratio for Catholic and Jewish congregations fall

slightly once resources are accounted for, suggesting a small part of the reason Catholic and

Jewish congregations are more likely to engage in political activity than evangelical churches is

that they have more resources to do so. Of all the congregations, synagogues remain the most

likely to engage in political activity even after resources are accounted for. Nagelkerke’s

pseudo R-square doubles to .13.

Model 3 enters political ideology as a predictor, and it operates as hypothesized. The reference

category is politically moderate congregations. Relative to them, politically conservative and

especially liberal congregations are more likely to engage in political activity. There is little

change in the odds ratios for the resource predictors or the religious traditions, except Jewish.

The odds ratio for synagogues declines by more than a third of its size, indicating that an

important reason synagogues are more likely to undertake political activity relative to

evangelical Protestant churches is because synagogues are more often politically liberal (see

Table 3) and liberal congregations participate in politics more than moderate and conservative

congregations do. For the model as a whole, Nagelkerke’s pseudo R-square increases to .17.

reference category. Odds ratios more than one mean the odds of the event happening in the predictor category are greater than the odds in the reference category. Odds ratios under one mean the odds of the event happening in the predictor category are less than the odds in the reference category. An odds ratio of one means the predictor and reference category have the same odds of the event happening.

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Theological orientation is added to the predictors in Model 4, and again the hypothesized effect

is evident. Theologically moderate and especially theologically liberal congregations are more

likely to participate in politics than theologically conservative congregations. The resource

predictors remain stable, but political ideology changes somewhat, with a small increase in the

odds ratio for politically conservative congregations and a decrease in the odds ratio for

politically liberal congregation, though both still operate as hypothesized. In taking account of

theological orientation, mainline Protestant churches and non-Christian congregations are less

likely than evangelical Protestant churches to undertake political activity, while Catholic and

black Protestant congregations remain more likely. The odds ratio for synagogues remains the

largest for the religious traditions, but it declines further in Model 4, meaning another reason

synagogues are more likely than other congregations to participate in politics is because they

are predominantly liberal in their theology and liberal congregations are more likely than

conservative congregations to engage in politics. Nagelkerke’s pseudo R-square does not

change.

Model 5 enters the proxy predictor for social ties to other religious traditions, and the odds

ratio shows that congregations that discussed or learned about another religious tradition are

more likely to participate in politics than those that did not. Accounting for ties to other

traditions results in small declines in the explanatory power of the resource predictors, liberal

political ideology and liberal theological orientation, indicating that better-resourced

congregations and politically and theologically liberal congregations are more likely to have

social ties to other traditions. The odds ratios for mainline Protestants and non-Christian

congregations are stable in Model 5, while the odds ratios for Roman Catholic and black

Protestant congregations tick upwards slightly. In contrast, the odds ratio for synagogues falls

slightly again, adding social ties to other religious traditions to the explanation of why

synagogues participate in politics more often than other congregations. Nagelkerke’s pseudo R-

square rises to .19.

The four factor scores for congregational program activity are entered in Model 6. Only Factor

3 - on which programs for education and training, jobs, and immigrants, migrants and refugees

had the highest loadings - affects political activity, increasing its likelihood. The odds ratios for

the other predictors remain largely the same, though for the first time having 200 or more

adults regularly active in the congregation’s religious life is no longer statistically significant at

the .05 level. Looking specifically at synagogues, the odds ratio does not change, suggesting

that though synagogues are more likely to have a range of program activities than other

congregations, an underlying disposition for them does not explain why synagogues are more

politically active as well. Nagelkerke’s pseudo R-square is .20 for model as a whole.

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Finally, Model 7 is the same as Model 6 but adds a series of socio-demographic control

variables, including separate measures of the gender, age, ethnic and immigrant composition of

congregations; urban, suburban or rural location; region; and, following Chaves, Stephens and

Galaskiewicz (2004), whether congregations received government funding in the 12 months

prior to the survey. Several of the controls related to gender, age and immigrant composition

of congregational members and congregations’ suburban location have predictive power, but

contrary to the findings of Chaves, Stephens and Galaskiewicz (2004), having received

government funding does not. Within the resource predictors, the highest category of

congregational income and both categories of active adults are no longer significant, while staff

members remain so. Political and theological orientations and the proxy measure for social ties

to other traditions remain largely the same and in the hypothesized directions, as does factor

score 3 for congregational program activity. Among the religious traditions, mainline

Protestant and non-Christian congregations remain less likely than evangelical Protestant

churches to undertake political activity, while Catholic and black Protestant congregations are

more likely. The odds ratio for synagogues is still the largest for the religious traditions, but it

declines further, indicating that the controls - especially a higher share of older members and

suburban locations - account for some of the reason why synagogues are more likely to engage

in political activity. With this final model, Nagelkerke’s pseudo R-square is .22.

VII. The residual gap in political participation between synagogues and other religious

congregations

From the baseline model to the full model with controls predicting political activity, the

magnitude of the odds ratio for synagogues declines by almost two-thirds, from 9.7 to 3.6. The

impact of resources, political ideology, theological orientation and social ties to other religious

traditions - all factors on which synagogues have an advantage in terms of catalyzing political

participation - explains much of this decline. Synagogues are more likely to participate in

politics because they have more resources to do so, their congregations tend to be politically

and theologically liberal, and - at least by one proxy measure - they have more social ties to

other religious traditions. One of the factor scores for underlying program activity in

congregations also predicts political activity, but it doesn’t account for the higher levels of

synagogues’ political engagement net of the other predictors. Several of the controls - which

weren’t specifically hypothesized as predictors - also account for why synagogues are more

likely to engage in political activities.

Even as the odds ratio for synagogues declines substantially, synagogues remain the most likely

congregations to participate in politics in the full model. In other words, even in the full model,

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a residual gap in political activity remains between synagogues and other congregations.

Several possibilities might account for this continuing difference.

Among the predictors, different measures - either of the particular indicator or, in some cases,

entered into the models as ordinal rather than categorical - might better account for some of

the remaining variation in synagogue political activity. On the dependent variable side, the

dichotomous dependent variable, constructed to simplify this analysis, may be masking

variation in the political activities that were used to construct the original scale before it was

dichotomized. Congregations from different traditions tend to specialize in different political

activities (Beyerlein and Chaves 2003; Chaves and Eagle 2015; Chaves, Stephens and

Galaskiewicz 2004). Examining each political activity separately and, specifically, regressing

each on the predictors might reveal some full models in which the difference between

synagogues and other congregations is fully accounted for.

Unmeasured explanatory predictors might also more fully account for the continuing

difference. As a social and religious minority, American Jews have been keenly aware of the

benefits and necessity of political activity to safeguard their rights (Wald 2019) and have

developed an elaborate communal infrastructure of politically-oriented organizations (Elazar

1995; Chanes 2001; Lipset and Raab 1995). If measurable at the institutional level, this politics

of minority consciousness, as Forman (2001) describes it, could explain why synagogues, the

institutional home of a small religious minority, are more apt to partake in politics than

congregations whose members are part of much larger religious traditions.

Lastly, the continuing gap between synagogues and other congregations may reflect, in part,

the kinds of synagogues in the National Congregations Study. The strong majority of them are

Reform and Conservative synagogues, both of which (despite the name Conservative) are

religiously liberal offshoots of traditional Orthodox Judaism. In contrast, very few of the

synagogues in the NCS are Orthodox. This makes sense from the perspective of how

congregations were sampled for the NCS (Chaves, Anderson and Eagle 2014). There are many

more American Jews who belong to Conservative and Reform synagogues than to Orthodox

synagogues, and so those Conservative and Reform synagogues had a greater chance than

Orthodox synagogues of entering the NCS sample.

Paradoxically, however, there are actually more Orthodox synagogues in total in the U.S. than

there are Conservative and Reform synagogues (Schwartz et al. 2002). This is because the

numerically fewer Conservative and Reform synagogues tend to have large membership bases,

while the numerically more Orthodox synagogues tend to have significantly fewer members

and to be fragmented along intra-Orthodox religious lines.

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The critical implication for this analysis is that Orthodox synagogues are less likely than

Conservative and Reform synagogues to have the characteristics that propel political activity.

Orthodox synagogues likely have fewer resources, ties to other religious traditions and program

activity, and they tend to be politically and theologically (small “c”) conservative. The

underrepresentation of Orthodox synagogues in the NCS, therefore, likely inflates the

difference in political engagement between synagogues and other congregations in the

achieved sample, and their greater presence would probably reduce the residual gap that

remains in the full regression model.

VIII. Conclusion

Synagogues in the NCS achieved sample are more likely to participate in politics than other

religious congregations because they have more resources to do so, their congregations tend to

be politically and theologically liberal, and - at least by one proxy measure - they have more

social ties to other religious traditions. One of the factor scores for underlying program activity

in congregations also predicts political activity, but it doesn’t account for the higher levels of

synagogues’ political engagement net of the other predictors. Several of the controls - which

weren’t specifically hypothesized as predictors - also account for why synagogues are more

likely to engage in political activities.

Beyond accounting for why synagogues are more politically active than other congregations,

the particular focus on synagogues presented here highlight and underscore a number of

general propositions about the relationship between religious congregations and politics.

Though not primarily constituted for political purposes, religious congregations serve as a

venue for political activity. By sponsoring opportunities for political action that individuals can

access, congregations provide an institutional mechanism for mobilizing individuals to political

participation. As such, congregations are an important part of the civil society institutional

landscape that mediates between individuals on the one hand and political and governmental

actors and institutions on the other. Synagogues fulfill all of these roles, and as this analysis has

shown, they do so relatively more often than other congregations do.

Lastly, the findings reported here provide evidence for the transformationalist understanding of

Jewish cohesion in the United States. Contemporary Jewish communal discourse has been

dominated by the assimilationist view that Jewish distinctiveness in America is inevitably

declining as Jews adapt to American society and culture (Cohen 2018). However, the National

Congregations Study suggests otherwise, aligning instead with a transformationalist perspective

that American Jews are have multiple bases of cohesion - some traditional, others emergent -

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that counteract patterns of assimilation (Goldscheider and Zuckerman 1984; Goldscheider

1989; Zuckerman 1990; Kotler-Berkowitz 2015, 2018). By documenting the high rate at which

synagogues participate in politics, both in absolute terms and relative to congregations from

other religious traditions, the NCS data reinforce Zuckerman’s (1990) insight that politics is an

important basis of Jewish cohesion in the United States. The political activity of synagogues -

partially accounted for by hypotheses covering religious congregations in general - serves to

maintain a distinctively Jewish presence in American politics and society.

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16

X. Tables Table 1. Political activity of congregations by religious tradition.

Religious tradition Engaged in one or more political activity (%)

Evangelical Protestant 36.5

Mainline Protestant 39.7

Black Protestant 65.0

Roman Catholic 58.8

Jewish 87.0

Other non-Christian 32.9

Total 44.1

Source: National Congregations Study cumulative data file 1998-2006-2012.

17

Table 2. Congregational resources by religious tradition. Cell entries are percentages. Totals may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Congregations

Evangelical Protestant

Mainline Protestant

Black Protestant

Roman Catholic

Jewish Other non-Christian

Congregational income

Less than $50,000 22 26 34 13 13 32

$50,000-less than $100,000 17 15 11 8 0 2

$100,000-$200,000 15 21 9 12 6 10

$200,000 or more 16 25 6 40 56 14

Income not reported 30 13 39 27 26 42

Total 100 100 99 100 101 100

Full-time paid staff

None 34 34 48 21 26 43

One 41 43 29 18 9 19

Two or more 25 22 23 60 65 38

Total 100 99 100 99 100 100

18

Table 2 (continued). Congregational resources by religious tradition. Cell entries are percentages. Totals may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Congregations


Mainline Protestant

Black Protestant

Roman Catholic


Less than 100 75 67 83 26 56 80

100 to less than 200 16 19 11 15 19 13

200 or more 10 15 6 58 26 8

Total 101 101 100 99 101 101

19

Table 3. Congregational political orientations, religious orientations and ties to other religious traditions, by religious tradition. Cell entries are percentages. Totals may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Congregations


Mainline Protestant

Black Protestant

Roman Catholic


Political orientation

More on the conservative side 79 46 38 46 13 22

Right in the middle 20 40 49 47 34 46

More on the liberal side 2 14 13 7 53 32

Total 101 100 100 100 100 100

Theological orientation

More on the conservative side 85 40 46 50 15 35

Right in the middle 14 40 44 44 24 26

More on the liberal side 2 20 11 7 61 39

Total 101 100 101 101 100 100

Discussed or learned about another religious tradition in past 12 months

No 77 71 82 80 49 75

Yes 23 29 18 20 51 25

Total 100 100 100 100 100 100

20

Table 4. Congregational activity by religious traditions. Cell entries are means of factor scores. Grand mean for each factor score is 0.

Congregations


Mainline Protestant

Black Protestant

Roman Catholic


Congregation activity factor scores

Factor 1 -.07 .23 -.12 .19 .36 -.37

Factor 2 -.02 .14 -.10 .03 -.09 -.15

Factor 3 -.10 .16 .04 .04 .32 -.13

Factor 4 -.02 .07 -.02 .08 .31 -.26

21

Table 5. Bivariate logistic regression models predicting congregational political activity. Cell entries are odds ratios for predictors. *** p = .000 ** .000 < p < .01 * .01 < p < .05

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7 (= Model

6 + controlsA)

Congregations (reference = evangelical Protestants)

Mainline Protestant 1.04 1.00 .89 .78* .79* .76* .80*

Roman Catholic 3.24*** 2.52*** 2.55*** 2.45*** 2.70*** 2.76*** 2.52***

Black Protestant 2.02*** 2.69*** 2.56*** 2.43*** 2.53*** 2.48*** 2.90***

Jewish 9.72*** 9.51*** 5.92*** 4.48** 4.18** 4.19** 3.64**

Other non-Christian .92 1.07 .65 .52* .54* .56* .51*

Congregational income (reference = less than $50,000)

$50,000-less than $100,000 1.57*** 1.52*** 1.55*** 1.49** 1.44** 1.42**

$100,000-$200,000 1.47** 1.53** 1.54** 1.50** 1.42** 1.44**

$200,000 or more 1.57** 1.63** 1.62** 1.52** 1.41* 1.35

Income not reported 1.03 1.10 1.12 1.15 1.14 1.11

22

Table 5 (continued). Bivariate logistic regression models predicting congregational political activity. Cell entries are odds ratios for predictors. *** p = .000 ** .000 < p < .01 * .01 < p < .05


6 + controlsA)

Full-time paid staff (reference = none)

One 1.93*** 1.91*** 1.91*** 1.86*** 1.82*** 1.82***

Two or more 2.05*** 2.05*** 2.05*** 1.97*** 1.94*** 1.90***

Number of adults active in congregation’s religious life (reference = less than 100)

100 to less than 200 1.34** 1.35** 1.35** 1.31* 1.29* 1.20

200 or more 1.50** 1.50** 1.51** 1.40* 1.34 1.15

Political orientation (reference =right in the middle)

More on the conservative side 1.27** 1.47** 1.48*** 1.53*** 1.55***

More on the liberal side 4.62*** 3.58** 3.38*** 3.33*** 3.48***

Theological orientation (reference = more on the conservative side)

Right in the middle 1.30** 1.27* 1.27* 1.29*

More on the liberal side 2.02*** 1.87*** 1.88*** 1.78**

23

Table 5 (continued). Bivariate logistic regression models predicting congregational political activity. Cell entries are odds ratios for predictors. *** p = .000 ** .000 < p < .01 * .01 < p < .05


6 + controlsA)

Discussed or learned about another religious tradition in past 12 months

1.83*** 1.79*** 1.80***

Congregation activity factor scores

Factor 1 1.06 1.07

Factor 2 1.00 1.01

Factor 3 1.21*** 1.21***

Factor 4 1.01 1.01

Constant .65*** .29*** .29*** .19*** .10*** .10*** .11***

Nagelkerke (pseudo) R-square .06 .13 .17 .17 .19 .20 .22

A Controls in Model 7: received government funding; percent of congregation female; percent of congregation Hispanic; percent of congregation immigrants; percent of congregation over age 60; urban, suburban or rural; and region.

research note why are synagogues more politically active...

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