Climate change beliefs among Christian religious leaders and their congregations

Authors Syropoulos and Sparkman used data from the National Survey of Religious Leaders (NSRL), 2019-2020, which contains a nationally representative sample of 1,600 clergy, and is distributed by ICPSR’s member-funded archive. The data helped the authors assess religious leaders’ climate change beliefs, and whether they shared those beliefs with their congregations. They found that most Christian religious leaders in the US believe in human-caused climate change, but rarely discuss it with their congregations. By analyzing a different sample of nearly 1,000 churchgoing Christian Americans, the authors found that they dramatically underestimated their leaders’ climate beliefs by about 40 to 45 percentage points. Finally, for an experimental intervention study, the authors recruited a sample of nearly 1,000 people who proportionately represented Christian denominations in the US. In the experiment, the authors sought to correct misperceptions about the climate beliefs of Christian religious leaders by providing participants with statistics obtained from NSRL data. This intervention achieved clear effects: the information moved study participants to update their perceptions, to become more likely to view climate action as consistent with their faith’s values, and to be less supportive of politicians who do not address climate change. Considering that 65-70 percent of Americans identify as Christian, with many attending church regularly, religious leaders who share their own beliefs could influence a large portion of the US population on climate change.