Reactions to Clergy Financial and Sexual Misconduct: Evidence from a National Survey Experiment

• In Event: 20455 - Gender and Racial Inequality in Organizations

Abstract

How do organizational actors evaluate different types of leadership misconduct? I explore this question through a preregistered survey experiment that compared how religious and non-religious individuals assess different forms of clergy malfeasance. Religious organizations provide an ideal context for studying responses to leadership misconduct, as clergy who engage in malfeasance violate not only institutional policies but also the sacred obligations and moral precepts central to the communities they serve. However, this study suggests that those best positioned to hold religious leaders accountable may be the least likely to recognize the severity of an incident or advocate for strong sanctions, particularly in cases of sexual misconduct. An analysis of a nationally representative sample (n=1,124) demonstrates systematic variations between religious and nonreligious individuals in their evaluations of different forms of clergy malfeasance. First, religiously affiliated people consistently rate both financial and sexual misconduct by clergy as less severe than non-religious respondents. Second, while non-religious respondents consider sexual misconduct violations categorically more serious than financial misconduct, religious respondents view both of these infractions equally. Third, these patterns persist even when controlling for the characteristics of the target of the clergyperson’s unwanted sexual advances, though both groups show heightened concern when the victim is a child, and especially when that child is a boy. Respondent trust in the congregation to handle the situation as well as recommendations for actions responding to the misconduct also appear to be associated more strongly with the respondents' own religious identity than by the nature of the transgression itself.

Author

• Carolina Patterson Seigler, Princeton University