A new study has found that the actual number of churchgoers who are leaving the church due to extreme political views is not that significant and those who choose to leave are mostly marginally involved with the institution.
The study, published in the American Journal of Political Science, was conducted using data from the 2012 Election Panel Study, the 2006 Franklin County Republican Primary Study and the Portraits of American Life Study.
"All we're really seeing here is a little churn," says Jacob Neiheisel, an assistant professor in UB's Department of Political Science and co-author of the study.
"We don't see people ensconced within the institutional framework leaving. These are people at the periphery so we don't see religious sorting where people on the left are disproportionally becoming anti-religious while people on the right are doubling-down on religion," he added.
The study was led by Paul Djupe, an associate professor at Denison University and co-authored by Anand Sokhey, an associate professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
The findings also indicated that the limited turn over was not a contributing factor to political polarization.
"We don't see the kind of polarization that worries us, which is so important because it links back to the broader concern we all share when we study polarization," Neiheisel said.
The author noted that organizations run the risk of having mismatched political beliefs surface among people, but he noted that churches and other institutions that are considered "storehouses of democracy" are not merely places to discuss politics.
Niehesel stated that the arguments presented in the latest study dispels generalized notions that religion is connected with what's going on in politics, or that people would leave churches exclusively because of what's happening in political circles.
He went on to assert that politics is not the primary driver behind people's decision to leave religion and it is not contributing largely to further polarization.
A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center on Nov 22, 2016 indicated that there was little discussion about election or candidates in churches.
Among voters who attend religious services at least once a month, only 14 percent said that information on political parties or candidates was made available to them in places of worship and only five percent said they were encouraged to vote in a particular way by their clergy.
Pew noted that the figures among voters who attend worship services monthly or more remained virtually the same from the 2012 and 2008 presidential election years, but there was an increase in political discussion in churches in 2004. The polling firm had suggested that the uptick was due to the large number of state-level initiatives and referenda related to same-sex marriage on ballots that year.
