This Upton Sinclair quote never misses “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Despicable. Racism on top of lies on top of more racism.

Based on student feedback, there's no reading assignment I've ever given that resonates as much as Hout & Fischer's study showing the rise in "Unaffiliated" adults wasn't due to disbelief as much as it was backlash to religion being associated with right-wing politics. www.jstor.org/stable/30888...

I've learned if you don't expect bluesky to be a replacement for Twitter, but something else entirely, it's okay. Don't expect a forum for different takes across the political spectrum. More like list of headlines on MAGA's latest assaults on democracy & some studies you can skim. And that's fine.

Whenever I'm reading commentary on the relationship between church & state, the moment an author says something about prayer, Bible, God being "taken out of public school" I know I'm dealing with someone acting in bad faith. Students can pray & read their Bible all day! Teachers can't organize it.

Data challenges the right's narrative on 1) our uber-religious founding, 2) religion's decline, & 3) the link to American fertility decline. 1. Religious adherence in 1776 was LOW. 2. Adherence *rose* mostly, just recently declined. 3. As adherence rose, TFR sharply declined. Boom was anomalous.

This was a fascinating read. Pronatalists pondering "We've been only trying carrots. But what's a stick we could use to threaten people into having more babies?" ifstudies.org/blog/pronata...

Something fascinating to me about religion is that its benefits to individuals and small groups don't seem to scale up. It really does help individuals cope & small groups cohere. But as you scale up to larger complex societies, the qualities that make it beneficial at smaller scale make it noxious.

Reminds me of this study showing the phrase "missionary position," which was historically thought to be what Christian missionaries taught their converts was the only acceptable sexual position, was actually just fabricated by a guy who didn't like Christian sexual ethics. doi.org/10.1086/318433

There it is. @profsamperry.bsky.social

Our book Taking America Back for God hit a big milestone today. Proud of this work and thrilled that it’s been a resource for scholars. @andrew-whitehead.bsky.social

What an honor for our documentary podcast When the Wolves Came to be named one of The Atlantic’s Top 20 Podcasts of 2025. Wild way to end a wild year!

Example # 2,303,301 of a clip I'd like to show Republican friends and ask them "You do know this administration says things like this because they think you're too stupid to know that's not how it works, right? You do know it's an insult, right?"

Sad for so many reasons. Cancer sucks. I feel for Ben Sasse and his family. And I wish we as a nation would invest more resources in cancer research. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...

Iron Law of Extra Credit: Students who don't need the extra credit take advantage of it while the students who need it the most do not.

Something I talk about in my book Religion for Realists. It's okay to recognize right-wing Christians *are correct* that egalitarian gender arrangements likely contribute to religious decline. You can disagree with their response strategy (shoring up patriarchal norms), but they're rightly afraid.

Currently enjoying this new one from Randall Ballmer this morning. Short and to the point. Good primer for documenting the Founders’ insistence on religious freedom, not just “toleration” for other religious or non-religious groups. Recommended.

I will never understand the ebbs and flows of Presidential approval ratings, which suggests to me they are almost completely useless as a forecaster of anything.

Holy crap chart from Gallup

When the headline says “repeats numerous false claims,“ what CNN apparently means is “every statement out of his mouth was an outrageous lie that is easily debunked.” www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/p...

Night and day difference between the new State Superintendent (who seems like a decent man and someone committed to just doing a good job) and Ryan Walters who was the biggest disaster in OK politics in a generation. www.koco.com/article/okla...

Right-wing provocateurs don't even bother to hide their racism anymore, unless you count phrasing these things in the form of a question.

Fascinating new research in AJPS (flagship poli sci journal) on Christian nationalism & SCOTUS "An ecclesiastical court: Christian nationalism and perceptions of the US Supreme Court" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... "We find that CN is related to Court attitudes in three ways:"

Feverishly working on this

"If you found out that a political candidate you support said that Adolf Hitler did some good things, would you still be willing to vote for that candidate? 41% of Republicans and 46% of adults planning on voting Trump in 2024 said yes. survey: perma.cc/28EA-HDRU

Despicable. Only months after Kirk's assassination, when we are all reaffirming our commitments to non-violence and free speech, Trump posts that the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife are really Rob's own fault. Basically saying "That's what happens when you make people mad for criticizing me."

When you read books by self-identifying Christian nationalists the talk of death-spiral-cultural-decline & overt persecution is often their most prominent theme. Descriptions are so exaggerated that they can’t be described as hyperbole or rhetoric. Only options are lying propaganda and/or delusion.

I'm gonna need an advance on all the Amazon gift cards I expect to get this Christmas. Sam needs his new books like now.

Watching “Wake Up Dead Man” the new Knives Out movie. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition of two versions of Christianity on display in the US right now.

Our new study provides rare causal evidence about NYC’s speed camera program. We find large reductions in collisions (30%) and injuries (16%) near intersections with cameras. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... @astagoff.bsky.social ky.social @brendenbeck.bsky.social nbeck.bsky.social 🧪

Pro tip: Leave yourself about 1,000 words of word count when you first submit journal manuscripts. I know it can be hard, but trust me. When you get that R&R, future you will heartily thank past you.

Here we are. Even our critics affirm every argument we ever made about Christian nationalism. We said it was powerfully linked with racist, sexist, & anti-democratic views. Evangelicals can't deny that anymore. They just disagree on whether that's good or not. www.christianpost.com/voices/the-r...

Another semester in the books. (Well, not the grades in the books yet.) 10+ years into this career and I'm still so amazed and grateful that I get to do what I do for a living. Thinking, reading, writing, teaching, traveling, speaking, mentoring. Suits me like water suits a dolphin. What a gift.

You may be relieved (but not surprised) to know this little volume will convince no one who wasn’t already solidly on the Christian Right anyway and just wondering whether they ought to adopt this particular label. Here’s my endorsement: “Refreshingly trite in its dishonesty.” —Samuel L. Perry

Racism. The answer is racism.

Well look at that. The inimitable @ansleyquiros.bsky.social gets a cite in Doug Wilson’s new apologia for Christian nationalism. And of course, he misrepresents (or didn’t read) her argument. @prri.org

I can’t believe how much of the Trump era is about solving problems that *don’t* exist while making all the problems that *do* exist, worse. There is no one who thinks the biggest problem with air travel right now is not having an area to do pull-ups.

Whenever someone tells me we should stop using the term "Christian nationalism" because it's too vague (it's not) and some folks use it as a slur (which I agree is wrong), I ask them what they think of the term "woke." Invariably I find they don't really have a problem with vague slur terms.

The real partisan "God Gap" in religious rhetoric among members of Congress wasn't most pronounced during GW Bush. Study shows it really showed up in 2nd term Obama & was largest during first term Trump. (Note Dems increased religious language too in recent years.) anthology.ach.org/volumes/vol0...

Contrary to MANY claims bouncing around the Internet about a religious revival among young Americans, Pew finds no cohort of Americans have become more or less religious since 2020. Just holding steady. Study here: www.pewresearch.org/religion/202...

Yo bluesky friends! I’m gonna stay on here but I’m also gonna start spending more time on Instagram (where I started an account 4 years ago and never did anything). So let’s follow each other over there too!

Attended an OU TPUSA event last night. Whenever I attend right-wing Christian events like this I always come away with greater empathy & compassion for attendees (in this case students mostly just trying to figure things out). Speaker’s talk was a tapestry of falsehoods & right-wing talking points.

You don’t say. It’s almost as if locking up immigrants with criminal records wasn’t the point.

NEW COLUMN We are on a path where decades of public policy aimed at supporting Americans with disabilities is being weakened and overturned due to the ongoing influence of Christian nationalism. @kettering.org kettering.org/ableism-in-a...

JOB: Université de Montréal - Department of Sociology -Assistant Professor in Feminisms, Genders, and Sexualities in Black, African, and Caribbean Worlds (Description and details in French) ciqss.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?...

If you’re in the Chapel Hill area, come to Haw River Tap & Table in Carrboro tonight at 6 to hear me talk about US fertility trends! moreheadplanetarium.org/calendar/car...

Two fully paid PhD positions at Lund University! One in Hebrew Bible and the other in Jewish studies, focus late antiquity. Gorgeous location and gorgeous colleagues. Don't sleep on this! (Set filter to HT to access these two in particular.) lunduniversity.lu.se/vacancies

Important new paper with obvious implications for America's own natalism-neoliberalism conversation. Between 2010-2020, spending cuts at the local level suppressed the fertility of poor households, NOT wealthier ones. Minority women more likely to be in areas w/spending cuts. doi.org/10.1093/sf/s...

WIC reduces birth weight disparities between black and white babies. www.nber.org/papers/w34521