Stockard, JeanFinlay, BarbaraJohnson, Benton2024-04-252024-04-252005-04https://hdl.handle.net/1794/2935922 pages. Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the Pacific Sociological Association, April 2005, Portland, OR.The dominant image of religion and politics in the US recently is that religion, especially Christianity, is strongly associated with conservative politics and antifeminist values with respect to women and sexuality. Many more liberal and progressive Christians have criticized this one - sided media focus, pointing out the strong traditional themes of support for peace, justice for the poor and marginalized groups, and love instead of judgment of neighbor. Even some evangelicals have decried the tactics and lack of concern for the poor of the Religious Right, and mainline leaders have strongly promoted progressive political change. While there are many studies that include religious affiliation, theological orthodoxy, and degree of commitment as predictors of political attitudes among lay members, there have surprisingly been fewer studies of the political and theological attitudes of mainline clergy on these issues. Moreover, since gender issues play a large role in conservative politics and religion, it seems important to study clergy attitudes in more mainline churches as well on these issues. Some studies find that women clergy in these denominations are more liberal on theological, social and political issues than men. If this is true, the increase of women in positions of church leadership is likely to influence congregational members in a more progressive direction. In this paper we present data from a survey of clergy in the state of Oregon, comparing mainline male and female clergy on a variety of theological and political opinions.en-USCreative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-USreligionpolitical opinionsclergychurch leadershipgender issuesOther