EEO-1 reporting will likely stop tracking job data by race and sex. “The goal here is to move toward colorblindness,” Jonathan Berry, a veteran of the first Trump administration and now solicitor for the Department of Labor USA Today 👉 www.usatoday.com/story/money/...

Part of my reading today

Great to spend time with Duke Divinity students today.

Commencement Speech @ UC Berkeley Viet Thanh Nguyen FB Link 👉 www.facebook.com/share/p/14cg...

Potemkin Spirituality is the staging of religious expression for political purposes, in ways that perform the familiar markers of Christian faith without carrying its substance. MORE 👇

New Book American Christians and Poverty Myths: Beyond the Veil of Meritocracy Mark T. Mulder crafts a rich tapestry of historical trends that helps evangelical and progressive Christians alike better understand the complex matrix of factors and respond more effectively.

Excellent Opportunity 👇👇👇 PRRI Public Fellows Program Seeks Candidates for 2026-2027 Cohort @prri.org Mid-career, interdisciplinary scholars studying religion, culture, and politics who are committed to deepening public understanding of religion’s role in society. 11 Month Non-Residency Program

A Resistance History of the United States by Tad Stoermer History of resistance movements in US, from the Colonial era forward. Publication date: June 2

In latest AP-NORC poll, about 8 in 10 Republicans approve of his handling of immigration, which is roughly 10 points higher than the share that say he’s doing a good job as president. MORE AP News 👉 apnews.com/article/poll...

NEW POST Recent research finds Americans’ willingness to welcome immigrants, grant them legal status & view them as deserving members of the national community is now shaped by whether those immigrants are perceived as _future Democrats_ or _future Republicans_. 👉 open.substack.com/pub/gerardom...

New Article—Social Forces “Negative views of science & scientists are relatively rare, but are more common among political & religious conservatives than among political or religious liberals.” “In a multivariate framework, it is clear that politics, not religious faith, is the crucial predictor…”

STING on Monday night in Charlotte

1776

The build up to the last pages, great read

Wearing my uniform today

A friend of mine laughed once because my name sometimes turns Irish. Excerpt from a new podcast episode from The Gospel Coalition. 👇👇👇

“Often overlooked is the role of local churches that till the ideological ground…Drawing on ethnographic data, author shows how a White church deploys…the process of interpreting current events in ways that align with a narrative of White Christian purity, normativity, dominance, or victimization.”👇

Honored and grateful

Quoted 👉"Sociologist Gerardo Marti writes in his Substack that 'Across religious traditions, gold signals the sacred'… gold 'marks what is set apart, worthy of contemplation, and beyond the ordinary… Covered in gold leaf and publicly consecrated by an evangelical pastor, it becomes something else.'”

Call for Proposals from Religion and the Public Sphere Grant funds will be up to $10,000 per award. Research projects using any social science methodology, qualitative, quantitative, or mixed, are eligible. Deadline July 1st.

Comparing Latine Women and Latine Men preparing for ministry would be an excellent dissertation topic: combines race, gender, work, religion, can also include organizational change, political context, transnational dynamics

New Post The theological problem with the golden calf in Ex 32 was the image reshaped what they believed about God. A gold-leafed statue of a living president while in office, dedicated as evidence that of God’s protecting hand on this man, is doing the same work. The medium is the theology 👇👇👇

The same person who proudly proclaims the transformative power by machinery on labor of the “NEXT” Industrial Revolution will decry Marx’s analysis on the transformation of labor by machinery that is still continuing from the FIRST Industrial Revolution.

Border religion at border of Durham & Chapel Hill

Someday, someone will write about Trump and Gold, as well as all the golden Trumps

“With Mr. Trump’s approval rating stuck below 40% & Democrats building a growing polling lead in race for Congress, even a dozen new Trump districts might not be enough for Republicans to retain the House. But while Democrats remain favored, retaking the House is no longer a foregone conclusion.”

The ApoCanvas

The video of the robot’s “ordination” in the story is worth checking out👇 “The robot, at just over four feet tall, is the latest effort by the country’s monks to show the modern relevance of Buddhism.”

New Post The National Garden of American Heroes is, at first glance, a landscaping project. Read carefully, the garden’s roster tells us a great deal more through whom it honors, & what it quietly excludes. In a sense, the garden proposes to define the official bearers of American Civil Religion.👇

Quoting Ryan Burge @ryanburge.bsky.social : The more evangelicals attend a house of worship, the less likely they are to agree that diversity strengthens America. That's both religious diversity and racial diversity. And it holds true for Democrats and Republicans.

Publishers Weekly features several new titles in Religion

I predict higher tariffs …

“Conservatives have long argued VRA cases morphed from genuine need to protect racial minorities to a partisan tool for Democrats… Now that conservative justices have completed their decade+long march to slash away at the law in a series of major decisions, they're taking a victory lap.”

Nancy Ammerman’s 20 year survey of congregational research, published in Practical Theology, draws on nearly 500 books & journal articles published 2005 - 2025. Her analysis maps the forces reshaping American religious life from a grander viewpoint that pastoral intuition alone is unable achieve.👇

NEW Article Christian nationalism is associated with approval of economic inequality among those who benefit from it, namely, higher-income Americans. academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a...

NEW Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion @jssreligion.bsky.social Open Access Inhabiting the White Church: Divinized Diversity and Antiracist Projects in Progressive Religious Organizations By Daniel Cueto-Villalobos 👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/UEKJVI...

Breaking: Trump has fired the membership of the National Science Board, which is oversees NSF. I have confirmed separately with multiple now-former members of NSB.

We asked, “If you had one magic wish to help you deal with polarizing issues, what would that be?” Overwhelmingly pastors said, “I would get my members off cable news & social media.” “They watch television & look at Facebook for 20+ hours every week. Then I get them once a week for 20 minutes.”

NEW REPORT Drawing from 7,453 congregations across 79 denominations & faith traditions—new report “finds American congregational life has entered a new phase marked by resilience, adaptation & cautious hope.” -Volunteering is up -Leaders say congregations are stronger -Clergy well-being improved

“…support for the wall of separation between church and state put mid-20th-century Baptists at odds with Catholics then, and with their own descendants now. “

“The truth is too great for any one actual mind, even though that might be dubbed ’the Absolute,’ to know the whole of it.” — William James

The arc of spectacular invention, dramatic collapse, and lasting institutional influence sits at the center of my new essay, “Reassembling the Sacred,” published this week in The Immanent Frame. — part of a broader thematic forum on innovation in religion and spirituality. Introducing the essay👇

Current Featured Essay on The Immanent Frame Reassembling the Sacred by Gerardo Martí tif.ssrc.org

Here, I unpack ‘religious innovation’ 👇 In many ways, this new essay encapsulates many years of my thinking on religion and innovation Now published on The Immanent Frame

PBS NewsHour did a great story tonight on gender, abortion, reproductive rights, and young adults👇

Trumpism as a Charismatic Community Of course, the Christian church will survive this moment. It will. But the question is what kind of church survives, and who will have the discernment to shape it. MORE 👉 open.substack.com/pub/gerardom...

JUST PUBLISHED What we are watching is the institutional absorption of the church into unquestioned partisan priorities. The vehicle for doing so is through the sanctifying praise of a singular person.

COMING THIS WEDNESDAY A new essay on "religious innovation" publishing online. It's part of a new series of essays on The Immanent Frame👇 tif.ssrc.org

Part of my reading today