A House Divided: Clergy, Conscience, and Same-Sex Marriage

Would pastors in conservative denominations be willing to break ranks?

This post has been unlocked through a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment for the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA). The graphs you see here use data that is publicly available for download and analysis through link(s) provided in the text below.

---

I have held the title of ‘pastor’ for basically half of my life. Three years as a youth minister, my first stint as the senior pastor lasted just a year, and then I took over the pulpit of First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon, Illinois. I preached my first sermon there at 24 and when we finally closed our doors, I was 42. I have a great affinity for pastors. We almost have a “brother in arms” vibe when we get together. People who have served in vocational ministry share this bond that’s hard to describe. I’m not speaking at them, I’m speaking with them. It’s one of my favorite audiences, honestly.

They often ask me questions about how other pastors are trying to navigate their jobs and what the data is telling me about the role of the clergy in a rapidly secularizing society. These are great questions but it's not that easy to answer them because there is a real dearth of survey data that focuses specifically on clergy. But there are a few datasets that I have found really helpful. One is the National Survey of Religious Leaders, which was fielded in 2019-2020 by Mark Chaves. Just as an aside, but Mark Chaves is one of the unsung heroes of the kind of work I do. Not only did he spearhead the NSRL, he also has been the driving force of the National Congregations Study. It’s Yeoman's work that often goes unnoticed, but I very much appreciate his contributions to the quantitative study of religion. He was kind enough to upload that clergy data to the ARDA last year, so the general public can access the instrument.

My interest was piqued by a single question in the NSRL, “Would you perform the wedding of a same-sex couple if your religious group allowed it?” The reason I like it so much is because it doesn’t ask the respondent to describe the official position of their denomination - it asks the respondent about their personal position on the issue. So, this allows a left-leaning evangelical or a socially progressive Catholic priest to register their disagreement with their tradition. Here’s how they answered the question:

For the record, a small portion of folks who took the survey said that they weren’t credentialed to officiate weddings, so I left them out of the analysis. But among those who were permitted to conduct a ceremony, a significant majority said that they wouldn’t personally preside over the nuptials of a same-sex couple. 58% said that they would “definitely not” do so and another 9% said that they probably wouldn’t conduct a same-sex wedding. In this sample, just about a quarter said that they would “probably” or “definitely” preside over such an event. Pretty fair to say that the gay affirming clergy portion of this sample is fairly small.

But what if I break the question down by religious tradition?

What should come as no surprise is the fact that evangelical clergy would not perform a same-sex wedding even if their tradition allowed it. In this sample, 90% of them said “definitely not” or “probably not.” This is pretty compelling evidence that a lot of evangelical clergy are not just parroting the views of their denomination - this is a strongly held personal belief. What is also striking is how Black Protestant clergy look a whole lot like their evangelical cousins. 84% said they would not officiate a wedding for a gay couple. That’s just five points different from the evangelical clergy in the sample.

The Catholic sample really jumped out at me. Of course, the official position of the Church is that marriage is only permitted between a man and a woman, but it looks like there’s a fair amount of dissension among the priesthood on this position. While 56% would not perform a same-sex wedding, 11% were on the fence on this topic and a third said that they would officiate such a ceremony if their Church allowed it. That’s pretty striking. The Christian faith most open to officiating a wedding was undoubtedly the mainline - 63% of their clergy would preside over a same-sex wedding, while about 30% would not do so.

Let’s go another layer down, though. I wanted to see if I could parse through what other questions in the survey could help to shed some light on factors that would make a pastor more or less likely to officiate a same-sex wedding. This is the personal political ideology of the respondent:

Unsurprisingly, there’s a huge gap in the views of conservative clergy compared to the liberal ones. Among those identifying as conservative, 91% said they would not hold a same-sex wedding. This topic is heavily rooted in the world of politics, it seems. But even among the moderate clergy, half of them said that they would “definitely not” do a same-sex wedding and another 14% said “probably not.” So even among moderates, there is stiff opposition.

The liberal clergy in the sample are obviously far more permissive. Among this group, 53% said that they “definitely” would officiate a ceremony for two men or two women, with another 21% saying that they “probably” would. So, 74% of liberal clergy would conduct a same-sex wedding, while 91% of conservative clergy would not. But I must point out that even among liberal clergy, 18% said that they wouldn’t officiate such a ceremony. So, there is still a bit of hesitation there even among clergy on the left side of the political spectrum.

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.

I was very surprised to see the results based on this question. A majority of clergy who brought up LGBT issues also said that they “definitely” would not conduct a same-sex wedding. Meanwhile about a third say that they definitely would lead such a ceremony. So, this isn’t strong support for the idea that clergy are raising the issue to advocate for a more permissive view of same-sex relationships.

In this sample of clergy, a majority (59%) never addressed LGBT issues. But among those who didn’t bring up the issue, the sample looks pretty similar to what we saw back in the first graph of the entire dataset. About 60% would definitely not conduct a same-sex wedding, while 11% would definitely do so. So, I’m not entirely sure if a pastor choosing to talk about homosexuality is doing so to advocate for LGBT rights or not from this data. It’s hard to parse.

There was another variable I wanted to touch on quickly - age. It would be easy to think that older clergy would hold to the more “traditional” view of sexual ethics and their younger counterparts grew up during a time that was more permissive of same-sex relationships. So, I tested that. The survey asked about the decade of birth because the sample size wasn’t that large (N = 1600).

This is a pretty interesting pattern, really. Among the oldest clergy in the sample (those born in the 1930s and 1940s), the share who would definitely not perform a same-sex marriage was relatively small at just 35%. But it’s important to note that there weren’t that many in these age categories - just 23 in the oldest bucket and only 132 among those born in the 1940s. But among clergy born between 1950 and 1989, there’s a whole lot of uniformity - about 60% would definitely not want to perform a same-sex wedding, even if their denomination would permit it. Practically speaking a clergyperson in their forties is no more (or less supportive) than one in their sixties.

Among the youngest pastors in the sample, there is a lot less resistance to conduct a marriage ceremony for two men or two women. Among those born in the 1990s, only 38% would be definitely opposed to presiding over that ceremony. But, again, the sample size was quite small - just 54 respondents.

But let’s throw all that together into a model now. I wanted to try and figure out what factors made it more or less likely for a pastor to be willing to officiate an LGBT wedding in a tradition that was clearly opposed to same-sex weddings. I restricted the sample to just clergy who were in an evangelical, Black Protestant, or Catholic tradition. A lot of the usual control variables were added to the model: race, education, age, gender, region, and income. I then tossed in a couple of other variables: the reported size of the congregation that the clergy served and also a dichotomous variable for being politically liberal. The dependent variable was clergy that responded that they “definitely” or “probably” would officiate an LGBT wedding.

I could only find one variable that consistently made clergy less inclined to perform a same-sex wedding: income. As clergy's personal income increased, they became less supportive. There were a bunch that had no impact at all, though. That includes race, education, gender and a pastor being located in the South. None of those made one more or less likely to want to preside over such a ceremony.

There were just two variables that drove up the desire to want to officiate a same-sex ceremony: the size of the congregation that pastor leads and being politically liberal. Clearly, political ideology was the most predictive factor in this analysis (in either direction). Again, this is a time when politics is very important. Liberal Catholics, evangelicals, or Black Protestant clergy are the most likely to deviate from the views of their tradition on this topic.

But the other variable that drove up the likelihood of officiating a same-sex wedding was congregation size. I think this one is pretty telling. What would give pastors a bit of protection if they broke ranks with their denomination? One would be having a larger church. Rightly or wrongly, it’s often assumed that a pastor who has a large following is doing something right and has a bit more influence in their denomination. It’s easier to remove a pastor of a small church than a large one. So, pastors who have a large flock seem more willing to break ranks and do what they want.

Being a religious leader is an incredibly difficult job. They have multiple constituencies - their local congregation, but also their denominational leaders. Trying to appease both of these groups can make pastors feel pulled in two entirely different directions. The topic of LGBT rights is obviously not going to go away in Christian circles. The United Methodist Church just went through a schism over this topic. How pastors navigate these difficult conversations will be interesting to observe in the years to come.

Code for this post can be found here.

---

Edit: I got asked for to check the data for Catholic priests broken down by age on Twitter and that seemed to get a lot traction, so I will just drop it below for reference.

Clearly, older priests are much more open to the idea of officiating a same-sex wedding than young priests. There’s certainly a ‘changing of the guard’ when it comes to the Catholic priesthood.