From Pews to Politics

Gwyneth H. McClendon is Assistant Professor of Politics at New York University and the author of Envy in Politics (2018). She has published numerous articles on political psychology, religion, and political participation, in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the Quarterly Journal of Political Science, and Comparative Political Studies among other journals. Rachel Beatty Riedl is Associate Professor of Political Science, Director of the Program of African Studies, and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, Illinois. She is the author of the award-winning Authoritarian Origins of Democratic Party Systems in Africa (Cambridge, 2014). Riedl is the Chair of the Comparative Democratization section of the American Political Science Association and member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

• 1. Religion as metaphysical instruction, and its influence on political participation; 2. Christianity and politics in Africa; 3. Differences in contemporary Christian sermon content; 4. Effects of sermons on citizens: evidence from the lab; 5. Recharging sermon influence: evidence from surveys and focus groups; 6. Group-level political engagement; 7. Implications and conclusions.

'This deeply insightful, empirically rigorous, persuasive analysis demonstrates the influence of Christian sermons in Anglophone Africa. These teachings differ by denomination and context, serving as distinct interpretative maps that diagnose political problems - and suggest very different solutions.' Anna Grzymala-Busse, Stanford University, California