The Propensity of Church Leaders on Political Participation in South-western Ethiopia: A Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Leadership moves and changes the world, including the state politics & the church. Leadership ensures democratization and modernization under political participation of all citizens whereas the status of church leaders’ participation in politics was not well known in many countries, including Ethiopia. Therefore, the current study aimed to determine the propensity of church leaders on political participation in Ethiopia. A descriptive study with quantitative data analysis of 376 study subjects was conducted from August 1-15, 2020. A semi-structured, validated and pretested questionnaire was served to collect the data by trained data collectors. The quantitative data were coded, entered into Epinfo computer software and transported to SPSS version 23.0 for analysis. During the process of data management, frequencies & percentages were calculated and described the data in tables & figures. The study has included participants of calculated mean age of 32.9 (SD±8.3) years. More than 62% of the participants have indicated the importance of political participation with the conventional form of political participation being the most practiced followed by unconventional form as reported by 64.9% & 27.4% of participants respectively. The current study has determined that the propensity of church leaders toward political participation was dissimilar and generally frail across the studied churches because of believed different source of power in church and state politics.