Pulpit and Politics.(Brief Article)(Book Review)

First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, February, 2005

PULPIT AND POLITICS. Edited by CORWIN SMIDT. Baylor University Press. 352pp. $34.95 paper.

A survey of clergy dispositions on matters theological, social, and political, drawing on data over a twelve-year period. The chapter on Catholic priests is based on so small a sampling as to be of slight use. The overall finding, however, is that Protestant clergy, both evangelical and oldline, are notably less overtly political and somewhat more theologically orthodox than was the case in 1989. At the same time, partisan divides are more deeply entrenched.