@article{406094f4ccb7417fbcce09c1b9bfa498,
title = "Using Sermons to Study Religions{\textquoteright} Influence on Political Behavior",
abstract = "The effects of religion on political behavior are difficult to study for a number of reasons. One difficulty is that “religion” is not a singular entity and is thus unlikely to have a unidirectional effect on political behavior. Another difficulty is that everyone in a particular place and time might be embedded in the same set of religious practices, such that the counterfactual is difficult to assess. In response to these and other challenges, we suggest opening up the black box of religion in order to examine the influence of its component parts. Specifically, we focus on exposure to sermons. We describe a study about the impact of Christian sermons in sub-Saharan Africa on reactions to inequality. We discuss the approach{\textquoteright}s advantages and limitations and discuss how to integrate it with the study of other aspects of religion and how the approach might apply to other domains of political behavior.",
keywords = "African politics, religion and politics",
author = "Gwyneth McClendon and {Beatty Riedl}, Rachel",
note = "Funding Information: We are grateful to Jeremy Menchik and Tim Longman and participants in a conference hosted by Boston University?s Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs (CURA) entitled ?Finding Religion{"} (April 5-6, 2019), as well as to anonymous reviewers, for comments. We are most grateful to Mwongela Kamencu, Julie Santella, Alice Xu, Eddine Bouyahi, Malitt Ishmael, Nelson Ngige, Brenda Ochieng, May Koko, Esther Kerubo, Amalia Bersin, Jack Furness, Kennedy Mmasi, Elvira Salgado, Adelina Pak, Michelle Ki, and Mert Salur for invaluable research assistance. We thank the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics in Nairobi, and the British Institute for Eastern Africa, for help facilitating the research. The Eric Mindich Foundations of Human Behavior Initiative at Harvard University and Northwestern University?s Equality, Development and Globalization Studies provided generous funding for the research described in this paper. The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2020. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.",
year = "2021",
month = apr,
doi = "10.1177/0010414020957667",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "54",
pages = "779--822",
journal = "Comparative Political Studies",
issn = "0010-4140",
publisher = "SAGE Publications Inc.",
number = "5",
}