Political scientists have been accused of inattention to the importance of religion in the American political process, but Gregory Smith cannot be included in this lot. Instead, he provides a valuable model of how political scientists should study the intersection of religion and politics. He focuses specifically on the potential political influence of Catholic clergy with a more detailed and multi-method perspective than can be found in previous research on Catholic priests in politics.

Smith combines his analysis of data from 35 Catholic parishes drawn from the Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life, conducted in the early 1980s, with his own case studies of nine Catholic parishes in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, conducted in 2004. The case studies include interviews and surveys of priests, surveys of parishioners, and content analysis of parish bulletin newsletters.

Smith's analysis of data from the Notre Dame Study indicates that liberal priests in the 1980s had more liberal parishioners than is the case today, although this association was limited to ideology and did not extend to partisanship. The Notre Dame Study data did not measure the political substance Catholic priests were actually communicating to their parishioners. To test the effects of priestly political communications more directly, Smith introduces his 2004 case studies, and he discovers remarkable variability even among the small number of parishes studied. For example, there was considerable diversity in pastors' frequency of preaching about political issues. Although priests rarely stray from Catholic teachings on any particular issue, they do emphasize some issues more often than others. Thus, Smith illustrates the fact that the political cues parishioners hear varies with the parish they attend.

Yet, Smith's 2004 results reveal little or no evidence of direct priestly influence on vote choice, partisanship, ideology, or issue opinions. Instead, he shows that priests can affect parishioners' willingness to accept Church guidance on political issues while influencing their religious particularism (intolerance toward those violating core Church teachings), which both in turn is directly related to attitudes on a variety of political issues. Catholics who are more open to Church guidance, and who exhibited high levels of religious particularism, are more likely to be politically conservative. They are also likely to belong to parishes with conservative priests who focus their parish communications more on abortion and homosexuality than on social justice issues.

The research design does have its limitations, as Smith acknowledges. Nine parishes are too few for national generalizations. Moreover, the parishes Smith studied are all in the Washington, D.C. area, and thus are especially inundated by political communication. Another factor at play is Catholic churchgoers' freedom to choose their parish. Although Catholic parishes have territorial boundaries, many Catholics stray from these knowingly; others do not even know what their parish boundaries are. Smith notes that 51 parishioner questionnaires (9.6 percent of responses) were excluded from the analysis because the respondent indicated that s/he regularly attended another parish or lived outside of the parish boundaries. This estimate of parish “shopping” is significantly lower than national estimates made in 2002 and 2005 by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). Between 22 and 25 percent of Catholics attending Mass at least “a few times a year” report that they do not attend “the parish closest to where they live” in CARA's national surveys. It is likely that Smith's question does not exclude some of those who have shopped for the parish they are attending and do not realize that they have crossed a territorial boundary.

The matter of parish shopping is important because individual choices may be related to the politics of specific parishes. For example, in 2000, CARA was commissioned to conduct an in-pew survey for a Washington, D.C., parish well known for its social justice focus and activities. This particular parish drew significant numbers of parishioners from outside its boundaries — many from Virginia and Maryland. Thus, not only did Catholics crossed parish boundaries to attend this parish, but nearly half crossed a diocesan boundary. More than three-fourths of the parishioners reported being drawn to the parish because of its commitment to social justice. Smith also notes that some of the priests in his study indicated that they sometimes edit their communications on political issues to expectations of how parishioners will react. Thus, there is reason to believe that both priests and parishioners may seek out like minds — and that priests may edit their commentary to suit their audience.

Smith's work is especially noteworthy for its clever measurement of the political communications made by religious leaders to churchgoers. Even with minor issues of causality, the findings are interesting and relevant to our understanding of the political behavior of American Catholics and the political influence of priests. The results deserve further attention. As Smith notes this may best be done with a study including a larger number of parishes and a longitudinal focus that can capture changes within parishes and the external political circumstances they confront. This book is especially recommended for graduate students who may be asking themselves how much valuable work they can do on a dissertation budget. Smith certainly shows that the answer to this question is “a lot.”