(ANALYSIS) When I was in graduate school our program required each student to have two majors and a minor field. I knew one of my major fields was going to be American politics — that was an easy choice. I was also made aware that it was easier to get a job teaching public administration than traditional political science because the positions were relatively plentiful and the number of grad students with training in PA were low, so I picked that up as a second major.
Read More(ANALYSIS) It’s the “cry more, libs” approach for Republicans. A Democrat will demonize or mischaracterize the other side of the argument because this helps them justify their own voting choices. It really goes both ways. But now that we have data from the 2025 Cooperative Election Study, we can actually dig into how vote choices are relating to approval ratings of Donald Trump.
Read More(ANALYSIS) The amount of cynicism in the world is sometimes hard for my mind to grasp. I really struggle watching TV shows and movies that have a really bleak view of the world. I don’t want to watch ”The Golden Girls” all the time (although it is a really great thing to put on the TV right before bed), but I just can’t spend a lot of my time meditating on the evilness of the human experience over and over again. I think it’s bad for my soul, to be honest.
Read More(ANALYSIS) I’ve said offhand a few times that PR people are not my favorite folks on Earth and there’s a reason for that. Their job and my job are not the same job. Actually, many times they are diametrically opposed to each other. Folks who work in public relations want to cast their organization in the best light possible. I want to try and get to the unvarnished truth about what’s actually going on behind the headline numbers.
Read More(ANALYSIS) In the data from 2024, 57% of white evangelicals were weekly attenders compared to 25% of white Catholics. So not controlling for attendance gives us a much different sample when analyzing evangelicals and Catholics.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Measuring happiness is a real problem for social scientists. It’s an area of intense interest because I think all of us would like to be just a little bit happier. But it all seems pretty subjective and transient at some level, right? Take the often hyped-up “World Happiness Report,” published annually by Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre in partnership with Gallup.
Read More(ANALYSIS) If one were to ask 100 informed voters about the types of issues at the center of the Culture War debate, I think that 20 years ago two would clearly be the front runners: Gay marriage and abortion.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Abortion has become a defining partisan issue, with Republicans generally anti-abortion and Democrats pro-abortion rights. Yet lawmakers like Charlie Baker, Susan Collins and Bob Casey show exceptions can succeed in some states. At the same time, long-term polling reveals growing support for abortion access across most religious groups.
Read More(ANALYSIS) The general admonition is the same in many faith communities: Try to marry someone who shares your faith background. That’s certainly a well-established norm in Jewish communities.
Read More(ANALYSIS) For those who have been long-time subscribers to this newsletter, you will know that the predominant approach to measuring religion is called “the three B’s.”
Read More(ANALYSIS) Using limited existing data, a new large survey examines how nonreligious Americans view religion, exploring whether they feel hostility toward it and what factors shape attitudes.
Read More(ANALYSIS) One of the central stories of that work is that white Christianity has become noticeably more conservative. That’s not just the case in white evangelicalism (which most people know about), but it’s also true among white Catholics. It has become increasingly the case that to be white and Christian is to support the Republican Party.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Several years ago, Canada began a program called Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). It’s a government initiative that’s beginning to reshape how Canadians are facing end-of-life situations.
Read More(ANALYSIS) A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about folks who report that they attend religious services multiple times a week. They make up about 6-8% of the country, and they are a qualitatively different group than people who report attending weekly. They have much higher levels of religious importance and prayer frequency. In other words, they’re super religious.
Read More(ANALYSIS) This is why I love the Substack community — a couple of weeks ago, one of my subscribers (Ben Hein) asked me if I had any good data on Jehovah’s Witnesses. And you know what? I actually do.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Before there was Dave Ramsey, there was Suze Orman. The OGs will know exactly what I’m talking about right now. She had a show on CNBC that ran on Saturday nights. We would watch it almost every week.
Read More(ANALYSIS) I think that I’m a lot like the folks who read this newsletter — I don’t actually watch the news that much anymore. I used to be a regular viewer of our local news station that is based close to Carbondale and covers our county, but then they literally fired all of their meteorologists and outsourced that part of the broadcast to some command center in Atlanta or some such place.
Read More(ANALYSIS) A couple of months ago, the Heritage Foundation released a report entitled, “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years.” You can probably guess the contents of said report from just the title, but to summarize: People aren’t walking down the aisle that much anymore.
Read More(ANALYSIS) If you’ve ever taken a sociology course in college, there’s a good chance that the instructor spent at least a little bit of time talking about the power of symbols in a society. They can be nothing more than a single word or just a short phrase that can convey a world of meaning, purpose and solidarity.
Read More(ANALYSIS) One thing I am always probing the edges of is how deeply religion is embedded in each one of us. There’s a saying that bounces around the sociology of religion: “you may be done with religion but religion is not done with you.”
Read More
