This panel explores how American faith communities navigate current political, cultural, and organizational challenges in the post-pandemic landscape. The first paper uses two national election surveys to analyze religious voting patterns in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, providing insights into how faith traditions, ethnocultural identities, and culture wars shape electoral politics. The second paper relies on a survey of 25,000 church attendees from fifty denominations to illustrate how congregational life has evolved since the Covid-19 pandemic. The third paper utilizes interviews to examine narratives of child-rearing among Episcopalian parents, focusing on how theologically inclusive frameworks balance freedom and moral guidance in religious socialization within families. The last paper uses mixed-methods to explore how American Zen Buddhist communities navigate organizational and generational changes during a clergy shortage. Together, these papers offer a nuanced, data-driven account of how U.S. religious communities engage with shifting political and social climates.
This paper examines the nature of religious influences on vote choice in the 2024 US presidential election. Using the 2024 iterations of the American National Election Study and the Cooperative Election Study, we consider the relative influence of traditional "ethnocultural" religious voting and more recent "restructuring" factors. We put our findings in historical context, comparing 2024 findings with those for presential contests since 1936. We also weigh the direct influence of religious traits on voting, controlling for social class, education, gender, age and other important factors.
Five years after the pandemic, how are church attenders perceiving and understanding church life and the changes in this reality? How have their experiences of corporate worship changed compared to pre-pandemic? What are the routines and rituals of those who worship virtually? This paper explores these and other questions using survey data from 25,000 attenders gathered in fall 2024. While much is known about how congregations have fared post- pandemic, little research has focused on the people currently occupying the pews, whether in-person or virtually. This analysis explores the different perceptions of those joining in the past 5 years, compared to long-timers, discusses the challenge of multiple church loyalties, and explores the commitment patterns of those who only attend in-person, hybrid attenders, and those who attend entirely online. It offers a unique look at a segment of congregational life that is seldom explored but is essential for organizational flourishing.
Dominant discourses in the United States valorize religious choice, but parents often want to pass on their faith and guide their children to the benefits of religion. This paper asks how highly religious mainline Protestant parents negotiate between the desire to transmit their faith to their children and the desire to encourage their children’s freedom to choose. Using over 140 qualitative interviews, we analyze parents’ talk about spiritual goals for their children, strategies for faith transmission, and reflections on directiveness versus allowing choice. Do parents hope that their children will adopt the faith in which they are raised? Where do parents feel comfortable imposing religious expectations on their children, and why? Answers to these questions shed light on the complexities of religious parenting in a cultural context that values theological openness and inclusivity.
This paper presents the findings from part of a larger study on organizational changes in American Zen Buddhist communities. It focuses on varying responses to organizational challenges brought by declining number of students joining these religious orders. I examine the integral role played by clergy training in the operation of Zen communities through the detailed study of one Zen community. I then discuss how four Zen communities responded to declining interest among Zen students to enter priest training and the implications of their different strategies. These cases sheds light on the various paths through which the rise of lay ministry in spiritual communities takes place and the continued struggle by these communities to define the clergy’s role as Buddhism becomes more Americanized.