NEW: The number of countries with high or very high social hostilities involving religion increased for the third year in a row https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/06/15/more-countries-had-elevated-levels-of-social-hostilities-involving-religion-in-2023/

NEW QUIZ: Where do you fit in the American political typology? Please share your results!

Is a religious revival happening? Watch this video for answers from me, Kati Tervo-Niemelä (University of Eastern Finland), Joel Thiessen (Ambrose University), Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme (University of Waterloo) & David Voas (University College London). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glgPhZ01-O0

Here's a great (free) training opportunity in survey research for undergrads & recent college grads this summer surveydatascience.isr.umich.edu/education/un...

Are enough births occurring to replace expected deaths? We introduce the “births observed / births needed” ratio as a simple indicator of demographic sustainability — showing why similar fertility rates can imply very different population futures. www.demographic-research.org/articles/vol...

When researchers asked LLMs whether they should switch between religions, LLMs tended to encourage becoming Catholic & shedding atheist & Jehovah's Witness identities. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.22975

How Measurement Changes Can Exaggerate the Growth of Religious "Nones" no paywall: sociologicalscience.com/download/vol...

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

Congratulations to the data wizards at @ourworldindata.org who created this elegant tool so you can adjust fertility, mortality & migration rates for any country to see the impact on population sizes & age structures. This is really, really great!! Check it out!! Excellent tool, terrific write up.

Congratulations to the data wizards at @ourworldindata.org who created this elegant tool so you can adjust fertility, mortality & migration rates for any country to see the impact on population sizes & age structures. This is really, really great!! Check it out!! Excellent tool, terrific write up.

Average Sunday service attendance in the Church of England 2019 - 690,000 2025 - 590,000

"citation count & journal impact factor reveals quantitative studies on secularization tend to be published in higher ranked journals & get more citations. Topics related to philosophy, Catholicism & law get fewer citations. The topic of science & religion is often found in lower ranked journals."

Out now in @jssreligion.bsky.social: Using Swedish full-population data, I show that exposure to religious pluralism through social ties is associated with a lower likelihood that parents baptize their child in the Church of Sweden 👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Register now for our upcoming webinar, co-hosted with the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, "Wishful Thinking? Is There a Religious Revival?," happening on Zoom on May 27 from 12:30pm-2pm ET. Register here: uottawa-ca.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Reminds me a bit of Jonas Jonasson’s books like The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. I loved all his books. I wonder what else is in this genre of audiobook.

Just finished the quirky, delightful Jonathon Fairfax audiobooks. If there was a fifth book, it would be my next listen. www.audible.com/pd/152887160...

Newly published analysis of 2025 British Social Attitudes data provides no support for claims of a Quiet Revival of churchgoing in Britain. natcen.ac.uk/news/no-revi...

"Opt-in polls have been shown to generate erroneous data for young adults and estimates of relatively rare behaviors."

Call for proposals: $10,000 seed grants for research about religion in the U.S. https://www.ssrc.org/programs/religion-and-the-public-sphere/innovation-in-religion-and-spirituality-seed-grants/ Great opportunity!

The call for papers for the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR) conference in Buenos Aires (February 15-20, 2027) is open until June 10. I'm looking for submissions about religion & demography. https://conference-system.sisr-issr.org/conferences/conference-2027/#papers

I am honored to become (in August) the president-elect of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. sociologyofreligion.org

David Voas notes YouGov & Bible Society never published the full dataset from the (now retracted) Quiet Revival report. They declined invites for debate. https://www.iflscience.com/they-basically-refused-any-kind-of-public-debate-on-this-why-the-quiet-christian-revival-narrative-fell-apart-83293

I joined host Adam Fleming and fellow panelist Pat Allerton (better known as the ‘Portable Priest’) on BBC Radio 4’s 'Anti-Social' today to tackle a perennial but increasingly contentious question: Is Britain still a Christian country? www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

The USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture invites journalists to propose story ideas that capture the changing nature of American religion. The journalism fellowship will fund journalists to tell deeply reported stories in written or multimedia formats. dornsife.usc.edu/crcc/journal...

Great initiative, sounds a little like @peercomjournal.bsky.social another excellent project which I highly recommend & encourage everyone to support!

Just found out about the new science journal "Stacks". The editorial board includes the legendary @elisabethbik.bsky.social. Publication costs are what they should be. Moreover, it has an interesting peer-review where reviewers interact, agree and vote for publications. stacksjournal.org

In this podcast, Edward Awh says studies showing benefits of "brain training" tend not to replicate. He mentions app that could be used to track change in cognitive ability (e.g., dementia onset), like routine blood pressure readings used to track change. 🧪 news.uchicago.edu/big-brains-p...

NEW: More people have left Catholicism than joined it in 21 of the 24 countries we analyzed. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/23/catholicism-has-lost-people-to-religious-switching-in-many-countries-while-protestantism-has-gained-in-some/

NEW: More people have left Catholicism than joined it in 21 of the 24 countries we analyzed. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/23/catholicism-has-lost-people-to-religious-switching-in-many-countries-while-protestantism-has-gained-in-some/

Which AI tool can flag ahead of time all the email typos this human doesn't notice until 30 seconds after I hit send?

Unfortunately, a great number of bogus respondents can sneak into opt-in online surveys, polluting the results. Among Orthodox Christians in a recent opt-in survey, about half seemed to be bogus respondents. https://orthodoxstudies.substack.com/p/what-the-quiet-revival-collapse-can

Here is what Americans consider immoral www.pewresearch.org/religion/202...

Say Trump is somewhat or very religious Republicans 50% White evangelicals 49% Catholics 29% Black Protestants 13% Atheists 12% Democrats 10% https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/16/americans-have-become-more-likely-to-say-trump-is-not-too-or-not-at-all-religious/

Say Trump is somewhat or very religious Republicans 50% White evangelicals 49% Catholics 29% Black Protestants 13% Atheists 12% Democrats 10% https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/16/americans-have-become-more-likely-to-say-trump-is-not-too-or-not-at-all-religious/

NEW: We highlight 3 changes in measurement of religious “nones” & call for organizations that make these changes to study their effects. From Matthew Conrad & me. www.surveypractice.org/article/1595...

How the number of American Sociological Association members has changed over time.

NEW: We highlight 3 changes in measurement of religious “nones” & call for organizations that make these changes to study their effects. From Matthew Conrad & me. www.surveypractice.org/article/1595...

What's the likelihood that a resolution to move @asanews.bsky.social away from for-profit publishers and toward open science data policies (where legally & ethically feasible) would have received a majority vote, were such a resolution allowed?

25% of American adults said they did not read or listen to any book in the last year—not even part of one. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

25% of American adults said they did not read or listen to any book in the last year—not even part of one. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

The full dataset from Pew's 2025 Global Attitudes Survey is available for download! A great resource for anyone interested in public opinion that contains rich data from 25 countries. www.pewresearch.org/dataset/spri...

The Quiet Revival report was retracted after YouGov acknowledged problems with bogus survey respondents. In this NYT story, I comment on why the initial report got so much attention. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/world/europe/britain-christian-revival-survey.html?searchResultPosition=1

It can be difficult to be sure whether surveys use: 💠Probability sampling (respondents recruited offline at random based on address/phone #) 💠Less rigorous panels anyone can join online The Ipsos MORI survey below uses the latter type of online opt-in data. www.christianpost.com/news/young-p...

Every time I look at an example of data to back up quiet revival claims it melts away on investigation. A boom in adult baptisms in France! Yep, but far from offsetting the corresponding plunge in infant baptisms. The boom is just a small % of catholics who missed an infant baptism.

Update: Today, opt-in online pollster YouGov revealed that bogus respondents biased their 2024 religion survey. Based on this survey, Bible Society's 2025 The Quiet Revival report claimed a massive surge of churchgoing in England and Wales. The report has now been retracted.

Update: Today, opt-in online pollster YouGov revealed that bogus respondents biased their 2024 religion survey. Based on this survey, Bible Society's 2025 The Quiet Revival report claimed a massive surge of churchgoing in England and Wales. The report has now been retracted.

NEW: Democrats overwhelmingly say US made wrong decision in using military force in Iran (88%). 71% of Republicans say decision was the correct one. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2026/03/25/americans-broadly-disapprove-of-u-s-military-action-in-iran/#trumps-handling-of-the-conflict-with-iran

The flagship journal of the European Sociological Association, European Societies, makes published articles free for everyone & does not charge authors a publication fee. Authors of quantitative work are required to openly share data & code. No @asanews.bsky.social journal shares all these traits.

In the not so distant past, sociologists had lively discussions in places like the Scatterplot blog, soc twitter & the Annex Sociology podcast. What happened? Kudos to @philipncohen.com for carrying on his blog.

The flagship journal of the European Sociological Association, European Societies, makes published articles free for everyone & does not charge authors a publication fee. Authors of quantitative work are required to openly share data & code. No @asanews.bsky.social journal shares all these traits.