Abstract
This study examined the effects of Catholic parishes’ influence on church members’ political opinions in Hong Kong using Paul Djupe and Christopher Gilbert’s theory of church-centered influence on political behavior. The contextual factors of the theory are formal and informal social networks, church environment, and orienting forces, while the individual factors are personal attributes and religious resources. The findings showed that social networks had a strong influence on the church members’ sense of issue importance, whereas church environment had less influence on its members. Orienting forces had almost no effect on the church members’ political opinions, while personal attributes and religious resources showed modest effects on certain issues, but not consistently across issues. The empirical findings from this study on the Catholic Church in Hong Kong and the research implications of the study of churches in Asia, will be discussed in the concluding section.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Catholicism |
Subtitle of host publication | Rites, History and Social Issues |
Publisher | Nova Science Publishers |
Pages | 117-137 |
Number of pages | 21 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781536123425 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781536123333 |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2017 |
Scopus Subject Areas
- Arts and Humanities(all)
User-Defined Keywords
- Catholic Church
- Church-centered influence
- Congregation
- Contextual analysis
- Hong Kong