Religious Participation and Involvement in Local Politics Throughout the Life Cycle

Abstract

Abstract Recent research has suggested that religious participation is related to perceptions of political efficacy and to voting behavior but not to direct political action. The present analyses extend this line of research to participation in local politics using survey data (N = 1423) from Northwestern Wisconsin collected in 1974. The results of this work suggest that church attendance is related to voting in primary and local elections but not to talking to local officials. These results remain when controls for organizational involvement, socioeconomic status, sex, and selected social psychological measures are included in the analyses. Variation in the strength of the relationship between church attendance and voting depending on the age of the respondent is also reported Implications of the findings for democratic politics at the local level of government are discussed.