Those who disagreed with their clergy about Trump were the ones who changed congregations
In the figure below, which shows results from a regression model, you can see that those who felt that they and their clergy disagreed over Trump in September were the most likely to report leaving that house of worship by November.
The two groups you’d expect were more likely to leave: Trump supporters who felt their clergy didn’t support him (represented by the red line on the left), and those who felt cool toward Trump but thought their clergy strongly supported him (represented by the blue line on the right).
This finding might help explain why evangelical clergy appear to have had little to say about Trump in their churches this fall. It’s very likely that they were concerned about alienating some of their flock.
These dynamics are not unique to 2016, or to Trump. In our forthcoming article in the American Journal of Political Science, we show similar evidence from our two decades of data gathering: Marginal attenders leave churches when they sense political disagreement.
More specifically, for 20 years, liberal to moderate evangelicals have been leaving their churches because they disagree with the Christian right. This is important because it allows us to recognize that this sorting process is plural, local, and continual. It is not something owned by the left or right, but a regular and expected part of life in all religious organizations.
Are these patterns troubling? Observers’ opinions differ. Religious institutions have long been practice grounds for skills later turned toward politics. On the one hand, if people are leaving houses of worship because of political disagreements, they may not be learning the skills needed to talk across differences and participate in politics.
On the other hand, as congregations become more engaged with politics, worshipers learn to connect their values with their political options. And the members most likely to leave over political disagreements tend to be marginal, infrequent attendees anyway.
People leaving their houses of worship over political disagreements is natural and to be expected. It’s certainly happened frequently, sometimes explosively, over the history of religion.
Paul A. Djupe is an associate professor of political science at Denison University, an affiliated scholar with PRRI, the series editor of “Religious Engagement in Democratic Politics” (Temple), and co-creator of religioninpublic.blog. Find him on Twitter @PaulDjupe.
Jacob R. Neiheisel is an assistant professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, where he studies religion and politics, election administration, and political communication.
Anand Edward Sokhey is an associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, associate director of the American Politics Research Lab and incoming director of the LeRoy Keller Center for the study of the First Amendment.
Article Appeared @https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/04/11/yes-many-voters-left-their-congregations-over-trump-so-what-else-is-new/?utm_term=.7da95d070275