Not surprising at all. In every institution, religious or commercial or educational, leaders are strictly required to be orthodox Democrats. Workers and customers are evenly split, MOSTLY not interested in the whole pointless mess of political arguing.
One number does surprise me. Based on pastors and seminarians I knew a long time ago, I figured that nearly all Episcopal pastors would be female by now. But they're not significantly different from others.
Guess this is the question that we ask about other people and things. Do I want my doctor, teacher, rabbi, or elected representative to be just like me or to be better than me? Different churches have different ways of choosing their leaders. We hire our rabbis by search committees composed of congregants. The umbrella groups have rules of who we may hire, though my shul has an open search. I don't think we asked any of the candidates about their political affiliation. It is my understanding that some Protestant denominations elect their pastors in a similar way, while others have them assigned by the denominational infrastructure, as do the Catholics.
The divide between worshipers and clergy appears in Judaism, or is emerging, though not necessarily political. The rabbinical pipeline is changing. A study released this week showed that the incoming non-Orthodox group that congregations will need to hire, if these people want to go to synagogues at all when they have other options, will be over-represented by gays and women. https://atrarabbis.org/research/rabbinic-pipeline-study/ Those are the people who enroll in our seminaries, not the careerists of my generation who seemed much like the kids who went to law and medical school or latched onto their family businesses.
No reason to think that Christians attending college today will make their decisions to enroll in seminary much differently, producing a parallel group for the churches to hire.
Is it wrong to think that a big contributing factor here is the education levels required of clergy? Higher education is pretty consistently correlated to political liberalism and I think you see similar gaps between clergy and laity in evangelical churches and denominations that require a high level of education for their clergy. Anecdotally, I found that the more educated I got, the more my appreciation for complexity grew, which makes it hard to be a card-carrying conservative. It makes it hard to be a card-carrying progressive, too, in my opinion, but it seems to me that the Democratic Party in its current form has more capacity to handle complexity than the Republican Party. I'd probably be one of those registered independents if I was American instead of Canadian!
It would be really interesting to tease out the difference within the UMC of what is considered "clergy". I would predict a bit of a divide between licensed local pastors and elders because of the seminary requirement (seminary being, I would assume, a liberalizing influence).
Also, these were between 22 and 23, so kind of mid-split for the UMC, right? Be interesting to see these same numbers in 5 years or so.
Your conclusion is spot on. This information means continued decline in these denominations.
As to your question, "Would a Republican even feel comfortable attending classes and working toward ordination?" I can't give you surveys but anecdotally the answer is, "No." And it's not just someone politically conservative, but theological conservatives are also told they are not welcome. One Presbyterian pastor confided that he had to be vague or silent about what he believed whenever talking with his presbytery. Even as such he was sent to a tiny rural church where I think his superiors thought he could "do less damage" by his belief in things like the miracles of the Bible.
Welcome to my TED talk about being a public, online Social Scientist: "Don’t get mad at me. Get mad at the data."
Not surprising at all. In every institution, religious or commercial or educational, leaders are strictly required to be orthodox Democrats. Workers and customers are evenly split, MOSTLY not interested in the whole pointless mess of political arguing.
One number does surprise me. Based on pastors and seminarians I knew a long time ago, I figured that nearly all Episcopal pastors would be female by now. But they're not significantly different from others.
Guess this is the question that we ask about other people and things. Do I want my doctor, teacher, rabbi, or elected representative to be just like me or to be better than me? Different churches have different ways of choosing their leaders. We hire our rabbis by search committees composed of congregants. The umbrella groups have rules of who we may hire, though my shul has an open search. I don't think we asked any of the candidates about their political affiliation. It is my understanding that some Protestant denominations elect their pastors in a similar way, while others have them assigned by the denominational infrastructure, as do the Catholics.
The divide between worshipers and clergy appears in Judaism, or is emerging, though not necessarily political. The rabbinical pipeline is changing. A study released this week showed that the incoming non-Orthodox group that congregations will need to hire, if these people want to go to synagogues at all when they have other options, will be over-represented by gays and women. https://atrarabbis.org/research/rabbinic-pipeline-study/ Those are the people who enroll in our seminaries, not the careerists of my generation who seemed much like the kids who went to law and medical school or latched onto their family businesses.
No reason to think that Christians attending college today will make their decisions to enroll in seminary much differently, producing a parallel group for the churches to hire.
Is it wrong to think that a big contributing factor here is the education levels required of clergy? Higher education is pretty consistently correlated to political liberalism and I think you see similar gaps between clergy and laity in evangelical churches and denominations that require a high level of education for their clergy. Anecdotally, I found that the more educated I got, the more my appreciation for complexity grew, which makes it hard to be a card-carrying conservative. It makes it hard to be a card-carrying progressive, too, in my opinion, but it seems to me that the Democratic Party in its current form has more capacity to handle complexity than the Republican Party. I'd probably be one of those registered independents if I was American instead of Canadian!
I restricted the sample to only respondents who have earned a four year college degree.
https://ibb.co/LDrgDG37
The gap persists.
It would be really interesting to tease out the difference within the UMC of what is considered "clergy". I would predict a bit of a divide between licensed local pastors and elders because of the seminary requirement (seminary being, I would assume, a liberalizing influence).
Also, these were between 22 and 23, so kind of mid-split for the UMC, right? Be interesting to see these same numbers in 5 years or so.
Your conclusion is spot on. This information means continued decline in these denominations.
As to your question, "Would a Republican even feel comfortable attending classes and working toward ordination?" I can't give you surveys but anecdotally the answer is, "No." And it's not just someone politically conservative, but theological conservatives are also told they are not welcome. One Presbyterian pastor confided that he had to be vague or silent about what he believed whenever talking with his presbytery. Even as such he was sent to a tiny rural church where I think his superiors thought he could "do less damage" by his belief in things like the miracles of the Bible.