Research Article Open Access

Factors Affecting Political Participation among Pentecostal Church Leaders in Ethiopia

Abstract

Leadership operates globally with explicit power to influence people in the dynamic context of society, including state politics, church relationships, and social events. Despite the scope of leadership, Pentecostal church leaders show less propensity of political participation for unknown reasons, especially in African countries.  The current study, therefore, aims to ascertain the factors that influence political participation of Pentecostal church leaders in Ethiopia in August 2020. The study has included six Pentecostal churches using a cross-sectional study design and quantitative data analysis of 376 randomly selected individual participants. Data were entered into Epinfo software and transported to SPSS version 23.0 for analysis.

Accordingly, the average age of the study participants were 32.9 (SD ± 8.3) years, and most of them (63.3%) holding a priest title in the church. More than 60% of study participants acknowledged the importance of political participation in influencing leadership, supporting evangelism, honing socio-economic development, and crafting life satisfaction. The rest proportion suggested that political participation promotes conflict in the church and causes a financial crisis. During the determinant analysis of the propensity of political participation, the female gender (AOR=0.5, 95%CI (0.26, 0.91), 𝑃-value=0.02) and sharing a priest title in the church (AOR=0.4, 95%CI (0.23, 0.78), P=0.01) were found to outlaw political participation. However, being sectarianism (AOR=3.6, 95%CI (1.39, 9.59), P-value-0.01) and higher monthly income (AOR=7.3, 95%CI (1.12, 45.71), P-value=0.01) were recognized as consoling variables for political participation in the area. Generally, the political participation of Pentecostal church leaders in the study region enthralls sectarians and people of higher economic class; however, ignores females and church servants. Therefore, it demands the local state and the church to create a comprehensive and inclusive political situation.

Daniel Geleta, Gersam Abera Mulugeta

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