Do Religious Leaders Engage Community Environmental Problems?

Much of the research about religious engagement with the environment has focused on individual citizens, leaving religious organizations and religious professionals (clergy) in the background or ignored; however, clergy are important actors in their own right, bringing issues to the attention of the congregation, devoting congregational resources to addressing problems, and shaping the beliefs and values of people in earshot. In this paper, we draw on gold-standard National Survey of Religious Leaders (NSRL) data from clergy and community environmental statistics from the federal government to understand the conditions that structure environmental engagement among religious leaders. A minority of clergy engage with environmental issues, though community circumstances play a conditional role in motivating them. We should not expect clergy to engage with the local environment, but it is more likely that they do when their worldview is consonant with the congregation and broader community.