Religious leaders sometimes condemn progressive social norms. In this paper,I revisit David Hume’s hypothesis that secular states can “bribe” churches intoadopting less strict religious doctrines. The hypothesis is difficult to test due toreverse causality: more liberal theologies may attract more political support inthe first place. To circumvent this problem, I focus on a theological conflict oversame-sex marriage within the Church of Sweden and take advantage of politicalregulations that effectively make some parishes shareholders of the church’sstate-protected property. The shares used for statistical identification are tied toproperty rights assigned more than 300 years ago, and they cannot be sold, tradedor amended by the individual parishes. I find that priests in shareholding parishesare less likely to publicly oppose same-sex marriage. The effect is stronger inparishes with more conservative members. The combined results are consistentwith a model of clerical opportunism, in which access to political rents increasesthe clergy’s loyalty to the political sponsors relative to the local community.