Institutional Change, Mainline Protestantism, and Women Clergy: Episcopal Congregations and Social Change

• In Event: 1580 - Section on Sociology of Religion Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 07. Religious Leaders and Shifting Religious Landscapes

Abstract

Social institutions, including religion and gender, provide the meanings that actors use to interpret and navigate their daily lives. Over time, these institutions can change. Mainline Protestant congregations are closing and losing membership from their 1960 peaks. To avoid embracing an ahistorical portrait of unilateral decline, the decline narrative should be complicated by how institutional change around matters of authority play out at the level of the congregation. One important change is the inclusion of women in ordained ministry positions previously reserved for men. In this paper, I ask how changes in one social institution might matter to changes in another. I use an original dataset to examine the role of clergy leaders’ gender to changes in adherent behavior in parish organizations. I find that the push from adherents for congregations to embrace an increasingly individualistic spirituality is likely more responsible for the decline in Mainline Protestant denominations than exogenous shocks from changes to gender as a social institution.

Author

• Catherine A. Crowder, University of California-San Diego