Holy Words, Contentious Politics: Abortion Talk in Religious Sermons

• In Event: Political Religious Elites and Religious Political Elites

Abstract

Religious entities, serving as long-standing legitimate sources of moral interpretation, play a crucial role in the discourse on abortion. As a trusted authority on the subject and as actors that have frequent opportunities to address and interact with devoted individuals, religious leaders can arguably shape public opinion on the subject of abortion rights. Using an original dataset of 220,000 online weekly sermons across 3,000 US congregations in 12 states, my paper explores where, when, and how religious leaders discuss abortion rights in the wake of major legislative changes on abortion rights in the US. Specifically, I employ geographic regression discontinuity and leverage the timing and the differential effects of SCOTUS' landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson in states to investigate the denominational, structural, organizational, and communal factors that shape religious discourse on abortion. I examine how the denomination's official stance on abortion rights, its alignment with the ideological inclinations of communities around local congregations, the denomination's hierarchical structure, and the network size (i.e., the number of churches of the same denomination in the area) influence the frequency of abortion in weekly sermons. I also investigate the context and sentiment surrounding this topic across the congregations, inspecting the content for moral versus political discourse on abortion rights by employing large language models (LLMs). Preliminary findings suggest that congregations located in states where abortion rights were threatened with the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson were more likely to mention abortion and speak of it politically compared to congregations in states where abortion rights were protected through the state.

Author

• Nela Mrchkovska, Vienna University of Economics and Business