The Demand for Clergy in Politics

Do religious individuals prefer to have their spiritual leaders directly involved in politics?  Whereas the common assumption might be that religious adherents would like to see clergy directly involved in public policy decision-making, Prof. David Buckley (University of Louisville, political science) shows that the opposite is true.  Using data from the World Values Survey, he noted an interesting pattern wherein the more spiritually-engaged a population was, the less likely those individuals were to support an active role for priests, pastors, and rabbis in the government.  Prof. Buckley then explains this phenomenon can be explained by two causal mechanisms.  First, in highly religious societies, there are many informal “back channels” wherein clergy already have influence over policy, thus necessitating less direct and formal roles.  Second, direct and visible involvement in politics raises a set of risks for confessional leaders including political backlash for supporting losing politicians, deterioration of moral authority when clerics support unpopular (or unsuccessful) policies/politicians, and the chance that taking a political stand would divide their parishioners making them less likely to remain engaged with the religious institution.  David illustrates these causal mechanisms using the debate over a reproductive health bill in the Philippines in the past decade.