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

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.

Can a Constitutional Monarch Influence Democratic Preferences? The Regulation of Public Expression in Japan

“…On one hand, Li et al (2016) and Myers et al (2017) found that exposure to the encyclical has a greater effect among liberals (i.e., Democrats) and those who have higher levels of prior concerns toward global warming. In contrast, Schuldt et al (2017) and Buckley (2020) found that conservatives (i.e., Republicans) are more susceptible to agreeing with 3. As of 2020, 59% of American adults have been noted to have a "very" or "mostly" favorable view of Pope Francis.…”

“…3 The Pope issued an encyclical in 2015 stating that people have a moral obligation to address climate change. 4 Researchers have attempted to analyze the effects of this encyclical on the American public's perceptions of climate change using panel surveys (Li et al 2016;Myers et al 2017) and survey experiments (Schuldt et al 2017;Buckley 2020).…”

COP and the Cloth: Quantitatively and Normatively Assessing Religious NGO Participation at the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

“…Even as the most religious are unlikely to see a conflict between religion and other forms of science, religious Christians still appear to have less faith in climate science than the general population [130]. Furthermore, Christians-and Catholics in particular, since even though acceptance of climate change among the religious seems to have increased, if only in a nuanced way, after Laudato Si [132,133], the papal text may have been more impactful for non-Catholics than Catholics-indicate low trust in what their clergy say about climate change [134]. The dominance of Christian NGOs amongst religious NGOs at the COP points to a potential climate disconnect between religious leadership and those in the pews.…”

Can a constitutional monarch influence democratic preferences? Japanese emperor and the regulation of public expression

“…In contrast, Schuldt et al. (2017) and Buckley (2020) found that conservatives (i.e., Republicans) are more susceptible to agreeing with the Pope's message. In addition, the highly liberal nature of environmental issues prevents researchers from drawing simple and generalizable implications.…”