Hey Ryan, I've been following your posts for a few months now and have found them incredibly insightful! I was a nondenominational evangelical pastor for several years and just converted to Catholicism a couple years ago.
I was initially surprised by the amount of Catholic clergy who indicated they would perform a same-sex "wedding" ceremony, but I think considering how the question was worded might clear up some of the seeming contradiction between priests and Catholic teaching. I could easily see this being a confusing and difficult question for some Catholics to answer in light of what we believe about the authority of Church teaching.
They responded to the question: Would you perform the wedding of a same-sex couple if your religious group allowed it? We believe that the Catholic Church cannot err in her teachings because Christ promised the gates of Hades wouldn't prevail against her (Matt. 16:18), she is guided by the Holy Spirit into all truth (John 16:13), and that the Church is the pillar and bulwark of truth (1 Tim. 3:15). Therefore if the Church permitted so called same-sex weddings, then we would trust that the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church to that conclusion and align ourselves with that teaching regardless of personal preference. However, this is an impossibility because we believe that the Church cannot change her teaching and contradict that which she received from Christ and His Apostles (which is why the question is difficult as a Catholic).
The question is an impossible hypothetical akin to asking what would my kids' personalities be like if they had a different father. Well... they wouldn't be my kids nor would they exist if they had a different father! Likewise, the Catholic Church would not be who she is and who faithful priests recognize her as if she changed her teaching and permitted same-sex marriage: it's a logical impossibility.
In short, I could see faithful Catholic priests struggling to answer this impossible hypothetical from 3 perspectives.
1)Yes; If the Catholic Church was somehow permitting this, then it would somehow be permissible (maybe this would mean that from the beginning God permitted same-sex "marriage").
2)No; If the Catholic Church somehow permitted this, then the Church wouldn't be who I believe she is, and I'd stay true to historic orthodox Christian beliefs.
3) I reject the premise of this question because it presumes a logical impossibility and I can't give an intelligible answer.
Hope this is helpful to consider! Thanks for all you do.
This is a helpful comment because it reminds me of how Baptist my brain is on stuff like this. It matters so very little to me what ABCUSA leadership thinks about these issues, that I don't even consider it in my thought process.
I don't know if anyone's really tried to measure what percentage of RC priests would publicly revolt against the Magisterium if they moved in the direction of female ordination or something like that. I would have to think it would be substantial.
Ha! I hear you. I grew up SBC and it really is a complete paradigm shift to go from personal interpretation being the final authority to trusting in a Magisterium.
The 2021 Survey of American Catholic Priests kind of looked into what you're asking. Not necessarily would priests revolt against the Church if she changed her teachings, but rather do they currently personaly dissent from orthodox Church teaching. Joe Heschmeyer has a great video breaking down some of its findings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08-8mSiEF38&t=132s
If you were to do follow-up research along this line, it would be fascinating to learn how exactly different priests understand the Magisterium and how those different conceptions break down by age. Being a theologian and not a statistician, I have no idea how to operationalize those questions for a survey, but I'd love to know the answers!
But I just don't have the resources to pursue such an endeavor. I imagine that there are some scholars at Catholic institutions who are much better positioned for that type of research.
Regarding this and the other thread, about Catholic priests, and speaking as a Catholic ethicist (of the 1950-1969 birth cohort): I get the points about how the question has additional complications for a priest, given that he should also be faithful to the pope and the magisterium, but I think these comments are overcomplicating it. It's a survey, and priests answering know that they are basically being asked: "Would you favor the Church changing its position on gay marriage?"
Read this way, 61% (!) of those over age 65 are saying they would favor the Church changing its position, 30% of those age 45-65 favor it, and only 19% (but still 19%!) of those under age 45. That's a perfectly understandable result. Priests who went to seminary no later than the early 1990s have--in my experience and I'm sure in many ways on surveys--have a more liberal demeanor. They are more likely to the "social justice" and "Vatican II" priests and not into policing the faithful in their bedrooms. There's been a strong shift in seminaries and who is recruited to the priesthood and willing to be a priest in the younger cohort; they are more more traditionalist.
If fact, the "would you if allowed" phrasing puts it perfectly for them, for I can believe that a decent chunk of priests of the older cohorts would be happy to see this change happen, but very few of them expect the teaching to change anytime soon, and so their are not advocating for it--they can't--they are just saying they would be willing to see the change come about. I think that any priest answering yes is imagining that it would shift over a long period of time, culminating in some kind of church council decision. They are not imagining a sudden change announced by a pope, and then they have to made a snap decision between how they were taught their whole lives and the new permission. All these priests have seen the very long, drawn out baby steps that Pope Francis has taken over a decade to maybe get to the point that some divorced and remarried Catholics could take Communion (out in the open). There are probably proportions just like the ones for this question, by cohorts, that favor, and when a change like this comes about, it's been so long in development that priests can get behind it. But even this change is taking forever, so the one on gay marriage is, in the end, purely hypothetical for any Catholic priest.
I was going to say similar. If the Church were to permit same sex unions. Priests would be obligated to maintain obedience to the bishop. However same sex unions are pretty obviously inconsistent with Catholic theology which teaches contraception violates marriage.
It's also worth noting that the Catholic clergy was plagued by predatory homosexuality in the seminaries for years. This was overshadowed by the child sexual abuse but the issues overlap. Your conservative Catholics will basically place all of the blame on homosexual cover-up among corrupt clergy. My take would be more nuanced, but my point is that there are internal reasons this is a complicated issue. Seminaries have recently been much clearer that the priesthood is not my a good fit for closeted gay men; a stark change in culture from the older cohort where it was treated as a gay vocation. All this baggage makes the issue and question that much more sticky of the clergy
The Mainline level of opposition was surprisingly high to me, but this was before the UMC split. I’d be very curious what that looks like now, or how it would look by denomination.
I agree that the Roman Catholic number is high. Which on one hand reinforces my idea that sociologically it’s kind of like a Mainline church and a traditional church lumped together under one roof, with rules that are really hard to change. But on on the other hand I wonder to what degree this is rooted in obedience to the church and in unity.
A Protestant pastor saying he would perform same sex marriages if he were allowed is telling you that he is basically lobbying for this and will vote for it if ever given the opportunity. A Roman Catholic priest may also be telling you that, or he may simply be indicating that he will remain obedient even if he has personal doubts over the policy, that he will not schism — a word that is much dirtier to Roman Catholics than Protestants.
I didn't even realize how complicated this question was for Catholic priests when I was doing the analysis, honestly.
Some folks are telling me that the priests must follow the teachings of the Magisterium and so if the Pope came out tomorrow and said that same-sex marriage is cool with him, then local priests would have to follow suit.
I just don't know how much dissension there would be in a case like that, really. I can't imagine every priest would be fine with the change.
Hard to judge exactly, though I’m confident it would generate a lot more dissension than Vatican II, which produced SSPX and the sedevacantists.
Obviously the maximal case is a true major schism. USCCB declares the Pope in Rome an antipope and calls a conclave to name a new one. But in that case I don’t think they would ever put Humpty together again.
So the best indicator of doctrine is politics, while the best indicator of politics is denominational affiliation (which implies doctrine). This sounds like a Zen thing to me.
Right. I’d say it depends on the person. I imagine if politics drives your theology, then your theology was probably not strongly-held in the first place. Which would lead me to think that effect is stronger among the laity than the clergy.
I wonder whether the causation for political leaning is reversed here. Perhaps it's not politics driving support for performing a same-sex wedding; perhaps it's theology driving political affiliation. So I wonder what would happen if you flipped the model and used politics as the d.v. instead, and treated "willingness to perform a same-sex wedding" as a proxy for broader theological commitments.
I didn't notice anything mentioned about the gender/sex of the pastor or their own marital status. How do those variables impact or not impact results?
Glad to see there is still lots of opposition in the Evangelical cohort. Frankly, it is appalling this is even a question. Every single Christian throughout all church history would have anathematized same sex marriage or any church official that would officiate such a wicked union. It is Christianity 101, so to me it is very clear this is the Zeitgeist of the age and not a good faith effort to understand what the scriptures and all church history has taught on this issue. It's incredibly embarrassing, especially that the number wasn't higher with Catholicism which claims church tradition as an authority. Every single Church Father's jaw would be on the ground if they looked at modern Christendom's position on homosexuality.
RE: Zeitgeist of the age....as was the Reformation.
Yet its (the Reformation's) main trigger was, but I'm not a church historian, "a good faith effort to understand what the scriptures ... taught" free of church history.
The majority is not right in every instance in church history. The minority is not always right throughout church history. The Reformation happened to be correct when it was the Zeitgeist because it accorded with reality and God's word. The woke movement does not accord with reality or God's word so it is wrong in this instance.
The way you are reasoning and arguing shows that you are part of the problem. You have a dark enchantment of a pluralistic, syncretistic modern Christianity that, as I said in my original comment, every Christian up to two seconds ago would have been appalled at.
I’m curious if your data allows for a distinction between these three factors:
1. Their personal views.
2. Their denomination’s view…AND…
3. Their individual church’s view…
Because I’m aware in our tradition of clergy who might answer an enthusiastic yes to the first two, but still be hesitant if their own flock was not as supportive.
This is pretty common among mainlines, where clergy trend more liberal than their folks.
I do have an observation on just one of the issues addressed here that I think you may have missed. You wrote:
"There was another question of the survey that asked clergy, “have (you) been involved in these sorts of activities in your capacity as a congregational leader within the past two years, which of the following issues, if any, did those activities address.” One option was: Gay, lesbian, or transgender issues. My working hypothesis was that clergy who intentionally addressed LGBT issues were doing so to argue in favor of same-sex marriage."
You then proceeded to express surprise that there "...isn’t strong support for the idea that clergy are raising the issue to advocate for a more permissive view of same-sex relationships."
My take is that OF COURSE there will be a split here. While many clergy in more liberal denominations are doing precisely what you expected, it is NOT true that the more conservative denominations - or, especially, their clergy members - have given up on the concept of LGBT identity as being sinful and a worthy target for pastoral intervention.
Or, looked at from a different angle, for your surmise to have been correct, the survey question would have needed to have been worded in such a way as to make clear that it was asking about addressing LGBT issues from a POSITIVE perspective, not just addressing them at all. My guess is that many clergy answered the question from a perspective of thinking that trying to "pray the gay away" counts as addressing LGBT issues - and, for them, it does.
Ryan, this is off topic from the post, but I have a couple suggestions for future posts based off of what is happening in America right now.
1) Curious about the intersection of politics, religion, and science. This is in relation to the mass firings of federal employees - many of which are in scientific fields. NPS, NIH, FDA, CDC, USDA, etc. I don’t know if there is data on this, but I think it could be interesting to look at political ideology and religious belief in relation to the occupation one holds.
2) Are there connections between belief/trust in democracy/democratic institutions and political/religious identities? Unsure if there is any polling data on people’s feelings towards democracy or the like.
I appreciate your delving into this subject, Mr. Burge. However, I think your analysis regarding the effect of congregation size needs further exploration. You suggest that the size of the congregation may provide "cover" for pastors to "buck" their denominational policy. That may be so. But there are a number of other factors that might explain why clergy in larger congregations are more inclined towards blessing same-sex unions. For one, the larger the congregation, the more people that are included and consequently more diversity of beliefs among the parishioners. That is to say, with a larger congregation, the greater the likelihood of people affiliated with the congregation who have not fully embraced the ethos and mission of the congregation. And so the pastor may feel more inclined to try to accommodate their expectations out of pastoral concern. Secondly, one can assume that the way that the congregation got large is by, to some extent, seeking to make the Gospel appealing to those who are part of the larger culture (if not "seeker sensitive" than something like it). So, the pastor is already inclined towards responding to the culture, more than your average pastor. Third, I would wonder about whether denominational affiliation and teaching would make that much difference anyway. Many (most?) evangelical congregations are either not part of a denomination or part of a loose organization that exercises next to no authority or accountability over them. So clergy supportive of same-sex blessings expose themselves to no real consequences for being out of step with their denomination. Case in point: Saddleback is not affected by the SBC's decision to disaffiliate over women pastors. My guess is that if you parsed all of the data out, you'd find that younger clergy, those who studied at mainline seminaries, and those closest to elites (in wealth, education, and status) are more sympathetic than other clergy. If this is true, than that finding is, admittedly, wholly unsurprising.
Yes I’m being lazy and not checking raw data myself, here, sorry, but…
Was there an earlier question in the survey along the lines of “does your denomination sanction same-sex marriages?” that pulled off a cohort of respondents from the original pool? If so, how large was that cohort?
It would be interesting to separate tolerance for same-sex relationships from the more recent officializing of relationships through marriage. Before the issue was turned into a political talking point in the 80s there were lots of same-sex couples who lived in ordinary ways and did ordinary jobs. Most people knew such a couple. Not a big deal, not a matter of public discussion. The couples weren't agitating to be official, and others weren't agitating to delegitimize them.
Also, same thing about abortion.....women/couples decided to have an abortion...not a big deal/not a matter for public discussion.
HOWEVER, when it became a matter of/by/for public discussion (and one wonders who was the public that made if a public issue) most of the discussion was con/against.
Yet another example of a squeaky, well prepared and agenda-driven, wheel dominating a discussion that the US public was not all that interested in having till the squeaky wheel decided/decreed it was needed.
Hey Ryan, I've been following your posts for a few months now and have found them incredibly insightful! I was a nondenominational evangelical pastor for several years and just converted to Catholicism a couple years ago.
I was initially surprised by the amount of Catholic clergy who indicated they would perform a same-sex "wedding" ceremony, but I think considering how the question was worded might clear up some of the seeming contradiction between priests and Catholic teaching. I could easily see this being a confusing and difficult question for some Catholics to answer in light of what we believe about the authority of Church teaching.
They responded to the question: Would you perform the wedding of a same-sex couple if your religious group allowed it? We believe that the Catholic Church cannot err in her teachings because Christ promised the gates of Hades wouldn't prevail against her (Matt. 16:18), she is guided by the Holy Spirit into all truth (John 16:13), and that the Church is the pillar and bulwark of truth (1 Tim. 3:15). Therefore if the Church permitted so called same-sex weddings, then we would trust that the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church to that conclusion and align ourselves with that teaching regardless of personal preference. However, this is an impossibility because we believe that the Church cannot change her teaching and contradict that which she received from Christ and His Apostles (which is why the question is difficult as a Catholic).
The question is an impossible hypothetical akin to asking what would my kids' personalities be like if they had a different father. Well... they wouldn't be my kids nor would they exist if they had a different father! Likewise, the Catholic Church would not be who she is and who faithful priests recognize her as if she changed her teaching and permitted same-sex marriage: it's a logical impossibility.
In short, I could see faithful Catholic priests struggling to answer this impossible hypothetical from 3 perspectives.
1)Yes; If the Catholic Church was somehow permitting this, then it would somehow be permissible (maybe this would mean that from the beginning God permitted same-sex "marriage").
2)No; If the Catholic Church somehow permitted this, then the Church wouldn't be who I believe she is, and I'd stay true to historic orthodox Christian beliefs.
3) I reject the premise of this question because it presumes a logical impossibility and I can't give an intelligible answer.
Hope this is helpful to consider! Thanks for all you do.
This is a helpful comment because it reminds me of how Baptist my brain is on stuff like this. It matters so very little to me what ABCUSA leadership thinks about these issues, that I don't even consider it in my thought process.
I don't know if anyone's really tried to measure what percentage of RC priests would publicly revolt against the Magisterium if they moved in the direction of female ordination or something like that. I would have to think it would be substantial.
Ha! I hear you. I grew up SBC and it really is a complete paradigm shift to go from personal interpretation being the final authority to trusting in a Magisterium.
The 2021 Survey of American Catholic Priests kind of looked into what you're asking. Not necessarily would priests revolt against the Church if she changed her teachings, but rather do they currently personaly dissent from orthodox Church teaching. Joe Heschmeyer has a great video breaking down some of its findings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08-8mSiEF38&t=132s
If you were to do follow-up research along this line, it would be fascinating to learn how exactly different priests understand the Magisterium and how those different conceptions break down by age. Being a theologian and not a statistician, I have no idea how to operationalize those questions for a survey, but I'd love to know the answers!
Me too, Fr. Patrick.
But I just don't have the resources to pursue such an endeavor. I imagine that there are some scholars at Catholic institutions who are much better positioned for that type of research.
Regarding this and the other thread, about Catholic priests, and speaking as a Catholic ethicist (of the 1950-1969 birth cohort): I get the points about how the question has additional complications for a priest, given that he should also be faithful to the pope and the magisterium, but I think these comments are overcomplicating it. It's a survey, and priests answering know that they are basically being asked: "Would you favor the Church changing its position on gay marriage?"
Read this way, 61% (!) of those over age 65 are saying they would favor the Church changing its position, 30% of those age 45-65 favor it, and only 19% (but still 19%!) of those under age 45. That's a perfectly understandable result. Priests who went to seminary no later than the early 1990s have--in my experience and I'm sure in many ways on surveys--have a more liberal demeanor. They are more likely to the "social justice" and "Vatican II" priests and not into policing the faithful in their bedrooms. There's been a strong shift in seminaries and who is recruited to the priesthood and willing to be a priest in the younger cohort; they are more more traditionalist.
If fact, the "would you if allowed" phrasing puts it perfectly for them, for I can believe that a decent chunk of priests of the older cohorts would be happy to see this change happen, but very few of them expect the teaching to change anytime soon, and so their are not advocating for it--they can't--they are just saying they would be willing to see the change come about. I think that any priest answering yes is imagining that it would shift over a long period of time, culminating in some kind of church council decision. They are not imagining a sudden change announced by a pope, and then they have to made a snap decision between how they were taught their whole lives and the new permission. All these priests have seen the very long, drawn out baby steps that Pope Francis has taken over a decade to maybe get to the point that some divorced and remarried Catholics could take Communion (out in the open). There are probably proportions just like the ones for this question, by cohorts, that favor, and when a change like this comes about, it's been so long in development that priests can get behind it. But even this change is taking forever, so the one on gay marriage is, in the end, purely hypothetical for any Catholic priest.
I was going to say similar. If the Church were to permit same sex unions. Priests would be obligated to maintain obedience to the bishop. However same sex unions are pretty obviously inconsistent with Catholic theology which teaches contraception violates marriage.
It's also worth noting that the Catholic clergy was plagued by predatory homosexuality in the seminaries for years. This was overshadowed by the child sexual abuse but the issues overlap. Your conservative Catholics will basically place all of the blame on homosexual cover-up among corrupt clergy. My take would be more nuanced, but my point is that there are internal reasons this is a complicated issue. Seminaries have recently been much clearer that the priesthood is not my a good fit for closeted gay men; a stark change in culture from the older cohort where it was treated as a gay vocation. All this baggage makes the issue and question that much more sticky of the clergy
The Mainline level of opposition was surprisingly high to me, but this was before the UMC split. I’d be very curious what that looks like now, or how it would look by denomination.
I agree that the Roman Catholic number is high. Which on one hand reinforces my idea that sociologically it’s kind of like a Mainline church and a traditional church lumped together under one roof, with rules that are really hard to change. But on on the other hand I wonder to what degree this is rooted in obedience to the church and in unity.
A Protestant pastor saying he would perform same sex marriages if he were allowed is telling you that he is basically lobbying for this and will vote for it if ever given the opportunity. A Roman Catholic priest may also be telling you that, or he may simply be indicating that he will remain obedient even if he has personal doubts over the policy, that he will not schism — a word that is much dirtier to Roman Catholics than Protestants.
I didn't even realize how complicated this question was for Catholic priests when I was doing the analysis, honestly.
Some folks are telling me that the priests must follow the teachings of the Magisterium and so if the Pope came out tomorrow and said that same-sex marriage is cool with him, then local priests would have to follow suit.
I just don't know how much dissension there would be in a case like that, really. I can't imagine every priest would be fine with the change.
Hard to judge exactly, though I’m confident it would generate a lot more dissension than Vatican II, which produced SSPX and the sedevacantists.
Obviously the maximal case is a true major schism. USCCB declares the Pope in Rome an antipope and calls a conclave to name a new one. But in that case I don’t think they would ever put Humpty together again.
RE: ....that he will not schism.
As in not rock the boat?
Or as in doesn't want to be de-frockedthrown out of the church?
So the best indicator of doctrine is politics, while the best indicator of politics is denominational affiliation (which implies doctrine). This sounds like a Zen thing to me.
...or a classic chicken-and-egg problem. We know they are correlated, but which causes what?
Right. I’d say it depends on the person. I imagine if politics drives your theology, then your theology was probably not strongly-held in the first place. Which would lead me to think that effect is stronger among the laity than the clergy.
I wonder whether the causation for political leaning is reversed here. Perhaps it's not politics driving support for performing a same-sex wedding; perhaps it's theology driving political affiliation. So I wonder what would happen if you flipped the model and used politics as the d.v. instead, and treated "willingness to perform a same-sex wedding" as a proxy for broader theological commitments.
Good point.
I didn't notice anything mentioned about the gender/sex of the pastor or their own marital status. How do those variables impact or not impact results?
Very good question.
Glad to see there is still lots of opposition in the Evangelical cohort. Frankly, it is appalling this is even a question. Every single Christian throughout all church history would have anathematized same sex marriage or any church official that would officiate such a wicked union. It is Christianity 101, so to me it is very clear this is the Zeitgeist of the age and not a good faith effort to understand what the scriptures and all church history has taught on this issue. It's incredibly embarrassing, especially that the number wasn't higher with Catholicism which claims church tradition as an authority. Every single Church Father's jaw would be on the ground if they looked at modern Christendom's position on homosexuality.
RE: Zeitgeist of the age....as was the Reformation.
Yet its (the Reformation's) main trigger was, but I'm not a church historian, "a good faith effort to understand what the scriptures ... taught" free of church history.
IMO, anyway.
The majority is not right in every instance in church history. The minority is not always right throughout church history. The Reformation happened to be correct when it was the Zeitgeist because it accorded with reality and God's word. The woke movement does not accord with reality or God's word so it is wrong in this instance.
Interesting examples of evangelical lag...based on scripture.
That said, a voice of (much needed) hope I read in your posting.
The way you are reasoning and arguing shows that you are part of the problem. You have a dark enchantment of a pluralistic, syncretistic modern Christianity that, as I said in my original comment, every Christian up to two seconds ago would have been appalled at.
How Roman Catholic clergy responded was . . . revealing. I will leave it at that.
I’m curious if your data allows for a distinction between these three factors:
1. Their personal views.
2. Their denomination’s view…AND…
3. Their individual church’s view…
Because I’m aware in our tradition of clergy who might answer an enthusiastic yes to the first two, but still be hesitant if their own flock was not as supportive.
This is pretty common among mainlines, where clergy trend more liberal than their folks.
Love your posts!
I do have an observation on just one of the issues addressed here that I think you may have missed. You wrote:
"There was another question of the survey that asked clergy, “have (you) been involved in these sorts of activities in your capacity as a congregational leader within the past two years, which of the following issues, if any, did those activities address.” One option was: Gay, lesbian, or transgender issues. My working hypothesis was that clergy who intentionally addressed LGBT issues were doing so to argue in favor of same-sex marriage."
You then proceeded to express surprise that there "...isn’t strong support for the idea that clergy are raising the issue to advocate for a more permissive view of same-sex relationships."
My take is that OF COURSE there will be a split here. While many clergy in more liberal denominations are doing precisely what you expected, it is NOT true that the more conservative denominations - or, especially, their clergy members - have given up on the concept of LGBT identity as being sinful and a worthy target for pastoral intervention.
Or, looked at from a different angle, for your surmise to have been correct, the survey question would have needed to have been worded in such a way as to make clear that it was asking about addressing LGBT issues from a POSITIVE perspective, not just addressing them at all. My guess is that many clergy answered the question from a perspective of thinking that trying to "pray the gay away" counts as addressing LGBT issues - and, for them, it does.
Ryan, this is off topic from the post, but I have a couple suggestions for future posts based off of what is happening in America right now.
1) Curious about the intersection of politics, religion, and science. This is in relation to the mass firings of federal employees - many of which are in scientific fields. NPS, NIH, FDA, CDC, USDA, etc. I don’t know if there is data on this, but I think it could be interesting to look at political ideology and religious belief in relation to the occupation one holds.
2) Are there connections between belief/trust in democracy/democratic institutions and political/religious identities? Unsure if there is any polling data on people’s feelings towards democracy or the like.
Question 1 is really hard, if not impossible to do from a data perspective. You'd have to start with a huge sample.
I did write about Question 2 way back in the early days: https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/trust-and-not-believe-or-believe
Yea, I figured question 1 would be hard to find data for. The only thing I found was from Pew, but it’s from 2009 - https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2009/07/09/section-4-scientists-politics-and-religion/
I appreciate your delving into this subject, Mr. Burge. However, I think your analysis regarding the effect of congregation size needs further exploration. You suggest that the size of the congregation may provide "cover" for pastors to "buck" their denominational policy. That may be so. But there are a number of other factors that might explain why clergy in larger congregations are more inclined towards blessing same-sex unions. For one, the larger the congregation, the more people that are included and consequently more diversity of beliefs among the parishioners. That is to say, with a larger congregation, the greater the likelihood of people affiliated with the congregation who have not fully embraced the ethos and mission of the congregation. And so the pastor may feel more inclined to try to accommodate their expectations out of pastoral concern. Secondly, one can assume that the way that the congregation got large is by, to some extent, seeking to make the Gospel appealing to those who are part of the larger culture (if not "seeker sensitive" than something like it). So, the pastor is already inclined towards responding to the culture, more than your average pastor. Third, I would wonder about whether denominational affiliation and teaching would make that much difference anyway. Many (most?) evangelical congregations are either not part of a denomination or part of a loose organization that exercises next to no authority or accountability over them. So clergy supportive of same-sex blessings expose themselves to no real consequences for being out of step with their denomination. Case in point: Saddleback is not affected by the SBC's decision to disaffiliate over women pastors. My guess is that if you parsed all of the data out, you'd find that younger clergy, those who studied at mainline seminaries, and those closest to elites (in wealth, education, and status) are more sympathetic than other clergy. If this is true, than that finding is, admittedly, wholly unsurprising.
Makes sense to me.
Yes I’m being lazy and not checking raw data myself, here, sorry, but…
Was there an earlier question in the survey along the lines of “does your denomination sanction same-sex marriages?” that pulled off a cohort of respondents from the original pool? If so, how large was that cohort?
I have scoured the codebook but I can't find any place where that question is asked.
You can search yourself here: https://www.thearda.com/data-archive?fid=NSRL&tab=2
It would be interesting to separate tolerance for same-sex relationships from the more recent officializing of relationships through marriage. Before the issue was turned into a political talking point in the 80s there were lots of same-sex couples who lived in ordinary ways and did ordinary jobs. Most people knew such a couple. Not a big deal, not a matter of public discussion. The couples weren't agitating to be official, and others weren't agitating to delegitimize them.
Also, same thing about abortion.....women/couples decided to have an abortion...not a big deal/not a matter for public discussion.
HOWEVER, when it became a matter of/by/for public discussion (and one wonders who was the public that made if a public issue) most of the discussion was con/against.
Yet another example of a squeaky, well prepared and agenda-driven, wheel dominating a discussion that the US public was not all that interested in having till the squeaky wheel decided/decreed it was needed.
Same with abortion, btw.