Here at the U of M sociology department, we are fortunate to host The Society Pages, a website where people write and post about sociological research and its relevance to real-world problems.
Today, there's a special feature on the TSP website, a post that I wrote called "Seeing the White in Christian America." I argue that the press coverage of "the evangelical vote" for Mr. Trump has de-emphasized the role of race in motivating the White evangelical vote.
In doing this, journalists and pundits are not so different than many sociologists of religion, who have tacitly endorsed a race-blind way of analyzing how religion and race intersect for White evangelicals and White Catholics, reproducing an insider discourse that systematically elides the role of race in shaping the religious beliefs people choose to emphasize and act upon. (For more on the latter, look for forthcoming work with Jacqueline Frost in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion on the intersection of race and religious identification, which follows up on earlier American Mosaic Project research on religion and racial attitudes and the role of race in shaping a preference for "cultural" Christianity in the U.S.)