Faith-Based Decisions? The Consequences of Heightened Religious Salience in Social Service Referral Decisions. ” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 45(1

Previous research suggests that clergy members are often an initial contact for people seeking advice or social services and clergy often refer such individuals in need to outside agencies. Recent “faith-based initiatives ” seek to engage churches and religious groups more deeply in social service delivery, potentially changing the mix of organizations to which clergy might refer people in need. In addition, public debates about faith-based social services have drawn attention to religion, often in politically divisive ways. Using semi-structured interviews and vignettes in which key characteristics of outside agencies are experimentally varied, we explore the implications of this heightened attention to religion on clergy referrals. We find that increasing the salience of religion affects clergy referral choices, with some clergy even willing to sacrifice quality care and resources for an individual in need when religious options are available as referral choices. We argue that this occurs at least in part because making religion salient in policy and referrals makes religious differences salient as well. When an individual is at a loss, facing a problem she simply cannot handle alone, it is likely that the first person she will turn to for help or advice is a clergy member (Chalfant et al. 1990; Milstein 2003). Because the majority of churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious organizations in the United States are too small to have resources to deal with congregants ’ problems directly (Chaves 2004), religious leaders often refer individuals in need to external agencies. Recen