The Quiet Hand of God: Faith-Based Activism and the Public Role of Mainline Protestantism

4. Religious Variations in Public Presence

108 4 Religious Variations in Public Presence Evidence from the National Congregations Study Mark Chaves, Helen M. Giesel, and William Tsitsos Religion and religious organizations are enjoying (or, perhaps, enduring) renewed attention from scholars and public officials. This renewed attention probably does not represent increased appreciation of religion qua religion—spirituality, theology, ritual, worship, or other core religious operations or concerns. Rather, it is largely driven by interest in what religion, and religious organizations, might contribute to the world outside the walls of churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples. How does religion enhance individuals’ civic skills and participation? How do religious organizations contribute to a vital civil society or enrich public discourse? How do they partake in movements for social change? Many now see religion and religious organizations as springs of voluntarism, community resources, and civic skills that can be deployed in a wide variety of secular arenas. This volume, with its focus on the public presence of mainline Protestantism, can be placed in the context of this wider concern with religion’s civic significance.1 Discussions of civic participation often note that not all voluntary associations contribute positively to civil society, not all community resources are deployed to advance the public good, and not all voluntarism is outward-looking. In one influential formulation, the political scientist Robert Putnam distinguishes between “bonding” and “bridging” forms of civic participation. “Bonding” civic participation tends to keep individuals within the groups or associations to which they are primarily attached. “Bridging” civic participation, by contrast, tends to build connections between groups or associations. This chapter focuses on religious differences in various kinds of bridging civic activities engaged in by American congregations . Such bridging activity is one important way that religion and religious organizations might have a public presence.2 Religious Variations in Public Presence / 109 Religious groups vary in the extent to which they value, pursue, or encourage public activities. Previous research suggests that, among Christians in the United States, such variation is systematically tied to longstanding differences among liberal or mainline Protestants, conservative or evangelical Protestants, and Catholics. Mainline Protestants, when they are active churchgoers, are more likely to join nonreligious voluntary associations , work actively in those organizations, and volunteer in support of secular activities and organizations. They are more likely to be on the boards of secular hospitals. Mainline congregations, at least historically, appear to have been much more likely than congregations in other traditions to give rise to secular associations of various sorts. In other words, liberal or mainline Protestantism appears to encourage more bridging forms of civic engagement than either conservative/evangelical Protestantism or Roman Catholicism.3 Previous research on this question has mainly examined individuals’ activities. In this chapter, we examine congregations‘ activities. Are the same patterns we see in individuals’ activities visible among congregations’ collective activities? Though a correlation between individuals’ civic participation and the civic activities of their congregations may seem obvious, it is not. The fact that Presbyterians, on average, volunteer more than Pentecostals for secular organizations does not in and of itself imply that Presbyterian congregations engage in more social service activities as congregations . However, our examination of thirty-eight concrete congregational activities bearing on the question of public presence—understood here as bridging kinds of activities—shows that mainline Protestant congregations do indeed engage in most of these activities at higher rates than do other Protestants and, to a lesser extent, Catholics. Political activity is the most important exception to this pattern. What type of connection might there be between a congregation’s bridging activities and the bridging activities of the individual people in that congregation? On the one hand, congregations might be gatherings of like-minded people who together use the congregation as a vehicle for activities that they might anyway engage in but which are more effectively or efficiently pursued through an organization. On the other hand, congregations might provide individuals with the information, rationale, and opportunities that lead them to pursue civic and public activities that they might not otherwise pursue. These two types of connection between congregations ’ and individuals’ public activity are not, of course, mutually exclusive, and we suspect that they work together in a positive feedback loop. We are not able, in this chapter, to discern the relative importance 110 / Chaves, Giesel, and Tsitsos of these mechanisms in producing the patterns we describe below. Still, by establishing that congregations within different religious traditions...