¹ Two recent studies which have dealt directly with the relationship between religion and party preference have been: Anderson, Grace M., “Voting Behaviour and the Ethnic-Religious Variable: A Study of a Federal Election in Hamilton, Ontario,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXXII (Feb. 1966), 27–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and John Meisel, “Religious Affiliation and Electoral Behavior: A Case Study,” ibid., XXII, (Nov. 1956), 481–96.

² For example, George Perlin found a stronger tendency for Protestants to vote Liberal than for Roman Catholics to do so in St. John's West. See George Perlin, “St. John's West,” in Meisel, John, ed., Papers on the 1962 Election (Toronto, 1964).Google Scholar

³ Differences within Protestant denominations are almost as great as the differences within Protestantism itself. Compare, for example, the voting preferences of the denominations specified in: S. Peter Regenstreif, “Group Perceptions and the Vote: Some Avenues of Opinion Formation in the 1962 Campaign,” ibid.; Robert R. Alford, “The Social Bases of Political Cleavage in 1962,” ibid.; Courtney, John C. and Smith, David E., “Voting in a Provincial General Election and a Federal By-Election: A Constituency Study of Saskatoon City,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXXII (Aug. 1966), 338–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Havel, J. E., Politics in Sudbury (Sudbury, 1966)Google Scholar; Wilson, John M., “Politics and Social Class in Canada: The Case of Waterloo South,” this Journal, I, no. 3 (Sept. 1968), 288–309.Google Scholar

⁴ See, for example, Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Berelson, Bernard B., and Gaudet, Hazel, The People's Choice (New York, 1948)Google Scholar, 22 ff; Berelson, Bernard, Lazarsfeld, Paul, and McPhee, William N., Voting (Chicago, 1954), 61–9Google Scholar; Lipset, S. M., Lazarsfeld, P. F., Barton, A., and Linz, J., “The Psychology of Voting: An Analysis of Voting Behavior,” in Lindzey, Gardiner, ed., Handbook of Social Psychology (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), II, 1124–70Google Scholar; Greer, Scott, “Catholic Voters and the Democratic Party,” Public Opinion Quarterly, XXV (1961), 611–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ Lenski, Gerhard, The Religious Factor (Garden City, NY, 1963)Google Scholar; Johnson, Benton, “Ascetic Protestantism and Political Preference,” Public Opinion Quarterly, XXVI (spring 1962), 35–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Ascetic Protestantism and Political Preference in the Deep South,” American Journal of Sociology, LXIX (Jan. 1963–64), 359–66. “Theology and Party Preference Among Protestant Clergymen,” American Sociological Review, XXXI (April 1966), 200–8; “Theology and the Position of Pastors on Public Issues,” ibid. (June 1967), 433–42.

⁶ “Theology and Party Preference,” 200.

⁷ See n. 19 and also Lenski, Religious Factor, 138–44.

⁸ It must be noted that the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec is only one of a number of Baptist groups in Ontario and Quebec. It was first incorporated by act of Parliament in 1889 and includes some 416 churches with a combined membership of 50,144. For the purposes of this paper perhaps the most significant fact about the convention is that a conflict over “liberalism” and “modernism” in the twenties led to withdrawal of approximately seventy of the most conservative churches. In 1953 these churches united with other fundamentalist groups to form the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada, now the other main Baptist group in Ontario and Quebec. The withdrawal of such a large group of conservatives has left the modal theological position of the Convention much more liberal than it would otherwise be.

⁹ Unfortunately there seems to have been no systematic study of this question. It is plausible to argue that in Protestant denominations, such as the Baptists, where local congregations determine the tenure, salary, and terms of employment of their ministers, the laity might exert considerable influence not only over the behaviour but also over the attitudes and opinions of the clergy. Nevertheless, the available evidence suggests that the influence patterns run in the opposite direction, and this is assumed to be the case for the purposes of this paper. See: Johnson, “Theology and Party Preference,” 204–5; Johnson, “Theology and the Position of Pastors on Public Issues,” 134; and Moberg, David O., The Church as a Social Institution (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1964), 502–3.Google Scholar

¹⁰ For example, in a survey done in the federal constituency of Broadview in 1966, regular church attendance was very significantly associated with preferences for either of the major parties: As a result of these findings and those of John Meisel (“Religious Affiliation and Electoral Behavior”) and Grace Anderson (“Voting Behavior and the Ethnic-Religious Variable”), we concluded that political norms are conveyed by religious institutions—and particularly by their clergy—so that, the more frequently citizens attend church, the more they are disposed to support the political norms of their society. This leads to increased support for traditional parties regardless of the denominational affiliations of the respondents.

¹¹ Codebooks and cards for the study are available through the Data Bank of the Institute for Behavioural Research at York University.

¹² “Theology and Party Preference,” 203.

¹³ The actual items used in this index are listed here. The assigned item score, which appears in brackets, was not included in the original questionnaire:

Question 16: Which of the following statements comes closest to your view of the theory of evolution, which maintains that human beings evolved from lower forms of animal life over many million of years?

The theory is almost certainly true. (2)

The theory is true except that God intervened to create man. (1)

The theory is almost certainly false. (0)

Question 17: Do you think that the creation story as related in the book of Genesis is:

literal history? (0)

a myth with theological implications? (1)

an allegory? (2)

Question 18: Do you think that the Bible is:

the verbally inspired and infallible Word of God? (0)

a book inspired by God but written by man and therefore not necessarily

accurate in all its details? (1)

a book written by men who were inspired in much the same way as are ministers

of today? (2)

Question 19: The New Testament tells of many miracles. Which of the following statements

comes closest to what you believe about Biblical miracles?

The miracles actually happened just as the Bible says they did. (0)

Something extraordinary happened in the believers’ spiritual experience which

the writers described in terms of the miraculous. (1)

The miracles happened, but can be explained by natural causes. (2)

¹⁴ All correlations reported here are Pearson product-moment correlations. The zero-order correlations between the theological index score and each item in the index were: .83,.79,.80, and .77.

¹⁵ “Theology and Party Preference,” 203.

¹⁶ John Wilson found in his Waterloo South study in 1964 that, of the Baptists who voted in the federal election of 1962, 77 per cent voted Progressive Conservative (communication to authors); John Courtney and David Smith found in their study of the city of Saskatoon that, of the 15 Baptists voting in the federal by-election, 47 per cent voted for the Conservative party (“Voting in a Provincial General Election and a Federal By-Election,” 349); and J. E. Havel, in his study of Sudbury, found that half the Baptists who voted in the federal election of 1963 voted for the Conservative party (Politics in Sudbury, 65).

¹⁷ “Compare the results in Table I with the distribution of party preferences of United Church ministers studied by Stuart Crysdale: Progressive Conservative, 21 per cent; Liberal, 34 per cent; NDP, 23 per cent; Other, 15 per cent; No answer, 7 per cent. These data are available in the Data Bank of the Institute for Behavioural Research at York University.

¹⁸ We can only report the respondent's evaluation of his father's social class.

¹⁹ Johnson reports the following table (“Theology and Party Preference,” 203):

²⁰ There is one further illustration of the manner in which theological position influences party preference. One might assume that one of the important influences on voting behaviour, regardless of the factors we have mentioned thus far, is the political affiliation of the respondent's father. To test the differences between the two groups we separated out the “fundamentalists” and the “liberals” and compared the relationship in each case between the respondent's father's party preference and the respondent's current party preference. The difierences were not startling, but they confirmed the evidence we have developed that theological position does influence party preference. Whereas, with fundamentalists, 58 per cent of the ministers whose fathers were Conservatives are themselves Conservative party supporters, with theological liberals only 35 per cent of the ministers with Conservative fathers are now Conservative party supporters.

²¹ The liberalism index consists of eight statements drawn from a variety of sources on such issues as foreign aid, labour unions, freedom of speech, and grounds for divorce. Respondents were invited to express their degree of agreement or disagreement with the statements on a five-point scale. The points were assigned scores ranging from 1 (for an answer judged to be very conservative) to 5 (for an answer judged to be very liberal). The index therefore had a potential range of 8 to 40. In fact, it ranged from 14 to 40. The correlations between the liberalism index score and each item in the index ranged from .41 to .59, with six of them being better than .50.

For purposes of analysis in bivariate tables (eg. Table VII) the index scores were grouped into three classes: “conservative,” “centre,” and “liberal.”

²² “Theology and the Position of Pastors on Public Issues,” 434.

²³ The anti-communism index consists of seven items with which respondents were asked to agree or disagree. The items deal with treatment of an individual communist, for example, his right to hold a position on a university faculty. The index score was derived by simply totalling the number of anti-communist answers. Thus a high score indicates strong anti-communism, a low score indicates weak anti-communism. The index scores potentially and in fact ranged from 0 to 7.

²⁴ Johnson found quite the opposite to be true among Baptist and Methodist pastors in Oregon: “… the association between theological and political liberalism seems to be much greater than the association between theological and political conservatism” (“Theology and the Position of Pastors on Public Issues,” 436). It is worth pointing out, however, that Johnson was unable to study the relationship among Baptists alone, because there were so few Baptists who were theologically liberal. See also Lenski, Religious Factor, 211, for a view that there is no relationship between political liberalism and theological liberalism, except on the issue of free speech.

²⁵ The multiple-correlation coefficient (r ²), using both age and the theological index as independent variables with liberalism as the dependent variable, was .47. Since the theological index alone correlated at .43 it is clear that, over all, age contributes little to the variance. Our variables, including the theological index, predicted much less of the variation in federal party vote: using the theological index, the liberalism index, and age as independent variables, the multiple-correlation coefficient with federal party vote was only .29. In other words, these three variables account for only 8 per cent of the variance in the dependent variable.

²⁶ Religious Factor, 211.

²⁷ The indifference of the theologically conservative ministers toward “worldly affairs” is indicated by the fact that only 32 per cent of the “Fundamentalists” and only 45 per cent of the “Conservatives” thought that the Convention should take stands on political issues, whereas 74 per cent of the “Liberals” thought so. A similar pattern emerged on the question of whether ministers had a responsibility to take public stands on political issues.

²⁸ See: Horowitz, Gad, “Conservatism, Liberalism And Socialism In Canada: An Interpretation,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXXII (May 1966), 143–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lipset, Seymour Martin, The First New Nation (New York, 1963)Google Scholar, chap. 7; Macquarrie, Heath, The Conservative Party (Toronto, 1965), 1Google Scholar; McClosky, Herbert, “Conservatism and Personality,” American Political Science Review, LII, 1958, 27–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morton, W. L., “Canadian Conservatism Now” in Fox, Paul, ed., Politics: Canada (Toronto, 1966), 343–7.Google Scholar

²⁹ Although we were not able to compare the mean score on our political liberalism scale with a score for an identical liberalism scale for the United Church ministers studied by Crysdale, some items were included in both studies and therefore permit a few comparisons which illustrate the relative conservatism of the Baptist ministers. For example, whereas 31 per cent of the Baptists agreed that “In the past 25 years this country has moved too far toward socialism,” only 9 per cent of the United Church ministers agreed with this statement. Similarly, only 34 per cent of the Baptists disagreed with the statement, “The way they are run now, labour unions do this country more harm than good,” while no less than 62 per cent of the United Churchmen disagreed with it.