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Religious Elite Cues, Internal Division, and the Impact of Pope Francis' Laudato Si'

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2020

David T. Buckley Open the ORCID record for David T. Buckley [Opens in a new window]
David T. Buckley*
Affiliation:
University of Louisville
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: David T. Buckley, Department of Political Science, University of Louisville, Ford Hall, Room 402, Louisville, KY40292. E-mail: david.buckley@louisville.edu
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Abstract

What impact do cues from religious elites have on followers, particularly when religious communities are internally divided? Could religious elites promote internal consensus, or would their cues stoke further internal polarization? This article utilizes the release of Pope Francis's encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si', to explore these questions. A unique survey experiment, conducted on a nationally representative sample of Catholic voters in the United States in late 2015, tests the impact of Francis' message relative to a similar message from unidentified environmental elites. In keeping with other studies of Laudato's impact in the United States, findings reveal real, but nuanced, effects from Francis' environmental cue. The Francis cue did impact conservatives and high religiosity Catholics, but these effects were not distinct from those on other Catholics in the sample, suggesting limitations in promoting consensus. Instead, responses to a Francis cue varied sharply depending on pre-existing views of Francis' leadership.

Type
Article
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 1 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

1.

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2017 Meeting of the American Political Science Association and Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, as well as the University of Louisville's Sustainability Research Roundtable. The author thanks Evan Berry, James Guth, Amy Erica Smith, Daniel DeCaro, Jack Zhou, Asheley Landrum, Geoffrey Layman, Rodger Payne, Dave Simpson, Melissa Merry, and the anonymous reviewers and editorial team from Politics and Religion for discussion and helpful contributions on various aspects of the manuscript as it developed.

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