Do Churches Promote Civic Participation? New Evidence on the Role of Local Worship Communities in the Civic Incorporation of Immigrants.

Recent research has shown that churches may play important roles in promoting civic participation among their members. But churches and similar local worship communities differ markedly in the degree to which they do so. Drawing on a recently completed study of the role of churches, mosques, temples, and other worship communities in the social and civic incorporation of recent immigrants, this paper presents an approach to understanding what worship communities might do to promote civic participation and how they differ among themselves in doing so. The paper identifies three dimensions of support for civic participation: social capital, associations as civic actors, and associations as sites of training in civic skills and mobilization for civic action. The paper also develops a model for understanding how and why local worship communities serving immigrants vary along these dimensions, focusing on the circumstances of immigration, the type of ‘institutional culture’ of the worship community, and the religious tradition it draws upon. We present data from our survey of Washington, D.C. area churches, mosques, temples, and other worship communities to illustrate the sorts of differences that emerge along each one of our three dimensions and demonstrate the utility of the explanatory model developed here. The paper ends with reflections on how this approach might be applied to the question of the role of local worship communities more generally in promoting civic participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]