In my research, I use an array of quantitative methods to better understand how religious leaders and organizations are changing over time — both in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the current political environment. My work has been published in outlets such Sociology of Religion, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Review of Religious Research, and Politics & Religion. Below I highlight some current projects and recent publications. For more info on my research, you can look at my CV or my Google Scholar page.
The Opinions of Evangelical Leaders in the Age of Trump. Using web-scraping tools, I collected online articles on prominent evangelical news websites from 2012 to 2021 to examine discourse around immigration, Islam, and abortion both prior to and following the rise of Trump to political prominence. I use text analysis techniques to identify patterns in how evangelical opinion leaders discussed these topics and how those discussions have changed over time. I discussed some of my early findings on abortion in a think-piece published by the Kenan Institute in 2021, where I argue that abortion — not immigration — was the key issue among evangelicals as Trump rose to prominence. In a manuscript currently under review, I use these data to examine how evangelical opinion leaders discuss immigration and Islam. In particular, I find that such discussions have typically been in the context of fear and foreignness — even before Trump rose to prominence.
Political Activism Among Clergy. Religious leaders often engage in political activism in their roles as community organizers and moral authorities. In a lead-authored paper published at Politics & Religion, my co-author and I use recent nationally representative data on congregational leaders to investigate how their views compare with the views of their congregants. We find that evangelical and Black Protestant clergy are politically well matched with their congregants, but Catholic and (especially) mainline Protestant clergy tend to be more liberal than their laity. In another lead-authored article (forthcoming in Sociological Focus), I investigate the political activities and agendas of clergy and how they vary across religious traditions.
Changing Worship Practices in Religious Congregations. I have conducted a substantial amount of research investigating changing worship practices in American religious congregations. Published articles I have co-authored with Mark Chaves and Anna Holleman track the increase in technology use and enthusiastic practices among religious congregations, as well as assess the technological and financial preparedness of congregations prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. I followed up on these findings in my solo-authored work by exploring the organizational processes driving changes in worship practice and technology. I find that most of the trend towards enthusiastic worship is driven by congregations adapting their practices (and not turnover in the population of organizations), and that cultural factors (not just financial resources) were important in determining which congregations had streaming or recording services prior to the pandemic.