Gary J Adler
Biographic Data
| ID | 269322 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gary J Adler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gary J |
| FAMILY NAME | Adler |
| SIGNATURE | ADLER G J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pennsylvania State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0580-8362 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 97 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 22 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Governing During a Culture War
As battles over transgender rights play out at the local level, this study offers the first large‐scale analysis of religion and U.S. local government officials’ views on key transgender rights policies. Drawing on our 2023 national probability sample of U.S. municipal, county, and school district officials, we examine officials’ attitudes toward policies related to restroom access and gender markers on driver's licenses. We find that religious a…
Religious rebound, political backlash, and the youngest cohort
We distinguish two streams of theory that dominate explanations of religious change: cohort-based cumulative decline theory, which emphasizes small and ongoing declines in individual religiosity accruing across generations; and political backlash theory, which emphasizes period- and identity-based changes due to the politicized meaning of religion. Notably, Muslim countries have largely been excluded from a recent wave of quantitative research on…
Culture, the civic, and religion
Creating Sacred Spaces
Why are some schools home to Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim student organizations but others are not? In this article, we draw on theories of student mobilization, especially recent theoretical insights on educational opportunity structures, to understand the factors associated with the presence and number of minority religious student organizations at U.S. colleges and universities. Analyzing an original database of minority religious stude…
Economic Elites and Support for Housing Affordability Policy
What Isn't Christian Nationalism? A Call for Conceptual and Empirical Splitting
In the years surrounding Donald Trump's presidency, a burgeoning strand of literature has emphasized the role of Christian nationalism in American political conflict. The authors argue that this literature contains mutually reinforcing theoretical and empirical shortcomings. Theoretically, the concept of Christian nationalism is overextended and conflates multiple conceptualizations of religion in public life. Empirically, the standard scale used…
Aesthetic Style
How does material culture matter for institutions? Material objects are increasingly prominent in sociological research, but current studies offer limited insight for how material objects matter to institutional processes. We build on sociological insights to theorize aesthetic style, a shared pattern of material object presence and usage among a cluster of organizations in an institutional field. We use formal relational methods and a survey of …
Religion-State Interaction at the Local Level
Relationships between religion and state are a core focus for social scientists, but little is known about a central set of actors in 'church-state' relations in the United States: local elected officials (mayors, town councilpersons, city commissioners). We report on a unique, representative survey of local elected officials, examining their religiosity, their interactions with religion through governance (prayers, meetings, symbol placement req…
Religion at the Frontline
Frontline officials (such as mayors and commissioners) are responsible for local-level responses to the COVID-19 pandemic across the United States. Their actions and attitudes, either in support of or opposition to public health recommendations, have resulted in widespread variation in local-level pandemic response. Despite evidence that religion significantly impacts the general public’s response to the pandemic, the influence of religion on off…
Beyond Betrayal
Are Feminine Body Weight Norms Different for Black Students or in Black Schools? Girls' Weight-Related Peer Acceptance across Racialized School Contexts
Adolescent girls with overweight or obesity are less socially integrated than their thinner peers. We examine racial-ethnic differences in girls' weight-related friendship patterns, especially noting Black-white distinctions given their different norms about the ideal feminine form. We also test whether schools with more Black students see diminished weight-related differences in peer integration for all girls and/or for Black girls. Using 1994-1…
Survey Data Collection Methods and Discrepancy in the Sociological Study of Religious Congregations
Surveys of religious congregations are a mainstay of sociological research on organized religion in the United States. How accurate, reliable, and comparable are the data generated from the disparate methods used by researchers? We analyze four congregational surveys to show how two components of data collection-sampling design and survey response rate-may contribute to differences in population estimates between the surveys. Results show that in…
American Parishes
Empathy Beyond US Borders
The Immigrant Effect
Short-term mission (STM) travel is a popular religious and civic practice done by religious congregations, but the local conditions that facilitate its production are poorly understood. We analyze organizational factors behind STM travel, with special focus on the role of recent immigrants within congregations. We use data from the third wave of the National Congregations Study. Our results show large differences by religious tradition, as well a…
The Gift Economy of Direct Transnational Civic Action
How does religion help facilitate civic action in transnational contexts characterized by material inequality and spatial separation? Short-term mission (STM) travel, a popular activity among U.S. religious groups, exemplifies a recently emerged form of transnational civic action characterized by face-to-face, decentralized, pragmatic activity. Our research analyzes how participants in STM-based relationships manage inequality while pursuing an i…
Increasing public support for food-industry related, obesity prevention policies
Congregational Political Activity and Same-Sex Marriage
We interpret three strands of social movement theory (social threat, opportunity structure, and resource mobilization) to understand religious congregations' political activity related to same-sex marriage. Using a unique, national data set from the 2008 presidential election, we show the importance of the anti-same-sex marriage discursive opportunity structure (DOS) for facilitating, and occasionally constraining, congregational political activi…
Breaking Down the Wall between Church and State
During the past twenty years, there has been a proliferation of significant, yet often overlooked, state-level legislative developments that challenge the notion of a limited role for government in the promotion or facilitation of religion and that seek to allow and protect greater religious expression in public institutions. For example, several states have passed laws that allow for religious displays or mottoes in public spaces, while other st…
An Opening in the Congregational Closet? Boundary-Bridging Culture and Membership Privileges for Gays and Lesbians in Christian Religious Congregations
Openness to homosexuality at the congregational level of American religious life has only recently received scholarly attention. This research reports patterns of membership openness to gays and lesbians among American Christian congregations and synthesizes emerging hypotheses to explain such openness. Using data from the second wave of the National Congregations Study (Chaves 2007), multinomial logistic regression models demonstrate evidence fo…
The Effect of Religious Short-Term Mission Trips on Youth Civic Engagement
Religious short-term mission trips are an increasingly popular form of American religious practice, especially among young people. Both organizers and participants often emphasize their transformative nature. However, scholarly efforts to evaluate systematically the social consequences of religious short-term mission trips are lacking. To address this neglect, our article investigates whether going on a religious short-term mission trip significa…
God's Heart Has No Borders
Journal Article God's Heart Has No Borders: How Religious Activists Are Working for Immigrant Rights Get access God's Heart Has No Borders: How Religious Activists Are Working for Immigrant Rights, by PIERRETTE HONDAGNEU-SOTELO. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008, 251 pp.; $21.95 USD (paper), $55.00 USD (cloth). Gary Adler, Jr. Gary Adler, Jr. University of Arizona Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Schol…
Dearly Departed
We establish for the first time a national mortality rate for religious congregations by determining the 2005 status of congregations in the 1998 National Congregations Study sample. The annual mortality rate for religious congregations is 1 percent, which is among the lowest mortality rates ever observed for any type of organization. This unusually low mortality rate probably indicates an organizational population whose weakest members live on i…
What Isn't Christian Nationalism? A Call for Conceptual and Empirical Splitting
In the years surrounding Donald Trump's presidency, a burgeoning strand of literature has emphasized the role of Christian nationalism in American political conflict. The authors argue that this literature contains mutually reinforcing theoretical and empirical shortcomings. Theoretically, the concept of Christian nationalism is overextended and conflates multiple conceptualizations of religion in public life. Empirically, the standard scale used…
An Opening in the Congregational Closet? Boundary-Bridging Culture and Membership Privileges for Gays and Lesbians in Christian Religious Congregations
Openness to homosexuality at the congregational level of American religious life has only recently received scholarly attention. This research reports patterns of membership openness to gays and lesbians among American Christian congregations and synthesizes emerging hypotheses to explain such openness. Using data from the second wave of the National Congregations Study (Chaves 2007), multinomial logistic regression models demonstrate evidence fo…
The Effect of Religious Short-Term Mission Trips on Youth Civic Engagement
Religious short-term mission trips are an increasingly popular form of American religious practice, especially among young people. Both organizers and participants often emphasize their transformative nature. However, scholarly efforts to evaluate systematically the social consequences of religious short-term mission trips are lacking. To address this neglect, our article investigates whether going on a religious short-term mission trip significa…
Religion at the Frontline
Frontline officials (such as mayors and commissioners) are responsible for local-level responses to the COVID-19 pandemic across the United States. Their actions and attitudes, either in support of or opposition to public health recommendations, have resulted in widespread variation in local-level pandemic response. Despite evidence that religion significantly impacts the general public’s response to the pandemic, the influence of religion on off…
Dearly Departed
We establish for the first time a national mortality rate for religious congregations by determining the 2005 status of congregations in the 1998 National Congregations Study sample. The annual mortality rate for religious congregations is 1 percent, which is among the lowest mortality rates ever observed for any type of organization. This unusually low mortality rate probably indicates an organizational population whose weakest members live on i…
Aesthetic Style
How does material culture matter for institutions? Material objects are increasingly prominent in sociological research, but current studies offer limited insight for how material objects matter to institutional processes. We build on sociological insights to theorize aesthetic style, a shared pattern of material object presence and usage among a cluster of organizations in an institutional field. We use formal relational methods and a survey of …
Increasing public support for food-industry related, obesity prevention policies
Breaking Down the Wall between Church and State
During the past twenty years, there has been a proliferation of significant, yet often overlooked, state-level legislative developments that challenge the notion of a limited role for government in the promotion or facilitation of religion and that seek to allow and protect greater religious expression in public institutions. For example, several states have passed laws that allow for religious displays or mottoes in public spaces, while other st…
Economic Elites and Support for Housing Affordability Policy
The Gift Economy of Direct Transnational Civic Action
How does religion help facilitate civic action in transnational contexts characterized by material inequality and spatial separation? Short-term mission (STM) travel, a popular activity among U.S. religious groups, exemplifies a recently emerged form of transnational civic action characterized by face-to-face, decentralized, pragmatic activity. Our research analyzes how participants in STM-based relationships manage inequality while pursuing an i…
Creating Sacred Spaces
Why are some schools home to Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim student organizations but others are not? In this article, we draw on theories of student mobilization, especially recent theoretical insights on educational opportunity structures, to understand the factors associated with the presence and number of minority religious student organizations at U.S. colleges and universities. Analyzing an original database of minority religious stude…
Religion-State Interaction at the Local Level
Relationships between religion and state are a core focus for social scientists, but little is known about a central set of actors in 'church-state' relations in the United States: local elected officials (mayors, town councilpersons, city commissioners). We report on a unique, representative survey of local elected officials, examining their religiosity, their interactions with religion through governance (prayers, meetings, symbol placement req…
Are Feminine Body Weight Norms Different for Black Students or in Black Schools? Girls' Weight-Related Peer Acceptance across Racialized School Contexts
Adolescent girls with overweight or obesity are less socially integrated than their thinner peers. We examine racial-ethnic differences in girls' weight-related friendship patterns, especially noting Black-white distinctions given their different norms about the ideal feminine form. We also test whether schools with more Black students see diminished weight-related differences in peer integration for all girls and/or for Black girls. Using 1994-1…
Survey Data Collection Methods and Discrepancy in the Sociological Study of Religious Congregations
Surveys of religious congregations are a mainstay of sociological research on organized religion in the United States. How accurate, reliable, and comparable are the data generated from the disparate methods used by researchers? We analyze four congregational surveys to show how two components of data collection-sampling design and survey response rate-may contribute to differences in population estimates between the surveys. Results show that in…
The Immigrant Effect
Short-term mission (STM) travel is a popular religious and civic practice done by religious congregations, but the local conditions that facilitate its production are poorly understood. We analyze organizational factors behind STM travel, with special focus on the role of recent immigrants within congregations. We use data from the third wave of the National Congregations Study. Our results show large differences by religious tradition, as well a…
Dearly Departed
We establish for the first time a national mortality rate for religious congregations by determining the 2005 status of congregations in the 1998 National Congregations Study sample. The annual mortality rate for religious congregations is 1 percent, which is among the lowest mortality rates ever observed for any type of organization. This unusually low mortality rate probably indicates an organizational population whose weakest members live on i…
God's Heart Has No Borders
Journal Article God's Heart Has No Borders: How Religious Activists Are Working for Immigrant Rights Get access God's Heart Has No Borders: How Religious Activists Are Working for Immigrant Rights, by PIERRETTE HONDAGNEU-SOTELO. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008, 251 pp.; $21.95 USD (paper), $55.00 USD (cloth). Gary Adler, Jr. Gary Adler, Jr. University of Arizona Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Schol…
The Effect of Religious Short-Term Mission Trips on Youth Civic Engagement
Religious short-term mission trips are an increasingly popular form of American religious practice, especially among young people. Both organizers and participants often emphasize their transformative nature. However, scholarly efforts to evaluate systematically the social consequences of religious short-term mission trips are lacking. To address this neglect, our article investigates whether going on a religious short-term mission trip significa…
An Opening in the Congregational Closet? Boundary-Bridging Culture and Membership Privileges for Gays and Lesbians in Christian Religious Congregations
Openness to homosexuality at the congregational level of American religious life has only recently received scholarly attention. This research reports patterns of membership openness to gays and lesbians among American Christian congregations and synthesizes emerging hypotheses to explain such openness. Using data from the second wave of the National Congregations Study (Chaves 2007), multinomial logistic regression models demonstrate evidence fo…
Congregational Political Activity and Same-Sex Marriage
We interpret three strands of social movement theory (social threat, opportunity structure, and resource mobilization) to understand religious congregations' political activity related to same-sex marriage. Using a unique, national data set from the 2008 presidential election, we show the importance of the anti-same-sex marriage discursive opportunity structure (DOS) for facilitating, and occasionally constraining, congregational political activi…
Breaking Down the Wall between Church and State
During the past twenty years, there has been a proliferation of significant, yet often overlooked, state-level legislative developments that challenge the notion of a limited role for government in the promotion or facilitation of religion and that seek to allow and protect greater religious expression in public institutions. For example, several states have passed laws that allow for religious displays or mottoes in public spaces, while other st…
Increasing public support for food-industry related, obesity prevention policies
The Gift Economy of Direct Transnational Civic Action
How does religion help facilitate civic action in transnational contexts characterized by material inequality and spatial separation? Short-term mission (STM) travel, a popular activity among U.S. religious groups, exemplifies a recently emerged form of transnational civic action characterized by face-to-face, decentralized, pragmatic activity. Our research analyzes how participants in STM-based relationships manage inequality while pursuing an i…
The Immigrant Effect
Short-term mission (STM) travel is a popular religious and civic practice done by religious congregations, but the local conditions that facilitate its production are poorly understood. We analyze organizational factors behind STM travel, with special focus on the role of recent immigrants within congregations. We use data from the third wave of the National Congregations Study. Our results show large differences by religious tradition, as well a…
American Parishes
Empathy Beyond US Borders
Are Feminine Body Weight Norms Different for Black Students or in Black Schools? Girls' Weight-Related Peer Acceptance across Racialized School Contexts
Adolescent girls with overweight or obesity are less socially integrated than their thinner peers. We examine racial-ethnic differences in girls' weight-related friendship patterns, especially noting Black-white distinctions given their different norms about the ideal feminine form. We also test whether schools with more Black students see diminished weight-related differences in peer integration for all girls and/or for Black girls. Using 1994-1…
Survey Data Collection Methods and Discrepancy in the Sociological Study of Religious Congregations
Surveys of religious congregations are a mainstay of sociological research on organized religion in the United States. How accurate, reliable, and comparable are the data generated from the disparate methods used by researchers? We analyze four congregational surveys to show how two components of data collection-sampling design and survey response rate-may contribute to differences in population estimates between the surveys. Results show that in…
Religion at the Frontline
Frontline officials (such as mayors and commissioners) are responsible for local-level responses to the COVID-19 pandemic across the United States. Their actions and attitudes, either in support of or opposition to public health recommendations, have resulted in widespread variation in local-level pandemic response. Despite evidence that religion significantly impacts the general public’s response to the pandemic, the influence of religion on off…
Beyond Betrayal
Creating Sacred Spaces
Why are some schools home to Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim student organizations but others are not? In this article, we draw on theories of student mobilization, especially recent theoretical insights on educational opportunity structures, to understand the factors associated with the presence and number of minority religious student organizations at U.S. colleges and universities. Analyzing an original database of minority religious stude…
Economic Elites and Support for Housing Affordability Policy
What Isn't Christian Nationalism? A Call for Conceptual and Empirical Splitting
In the years surrounding Donald Trump's presidency, a burgeoning strand of literature has emphasized the role of Christian nationalism in American political conflict. The authors argue that this literature contains mutually reinforcing theoretical and empirical shortcomings. Theoretically, the concept of Christian nationalism is overextended and conflates multiple conceptualizations of religion in public life. Empirically, the standard scale used…
Aesthetic Style
How does material culture matter for institutions? Material objects are increasingly prominent in sociological research, but current studies offer limited insight for how material objects matter to institutional processes. We build on sociological insights to theorize aesthetic style, a shared pattern of material object presence and usage among a cluster of organizations in an institutional field. We use formal relational methods and a survey of …
Religion-State Interaction at the Local Level
Relationships between religion and state are a core focus for social scientists, but little is known about a central set of actors in 'church-state' relations in the United States: local elected officials (mayors, town councilpersons, city commissioners). We report on a unique, representative survey of local elected officials, examining their religiosity, their interactions with religion through governance (prayers, meetings, symbol placement req…
Culture, the civic, and religion
Religious rebound, political backlash, and the youngest cohort
We distinguish two streams of theory that dominate explanations of religious change: cohort-based cumulative decline theory, which emphasizes small and ongoing declines in individual religiosity accruing across generations; and political backlash theory, which emphasizes period- and identity-based changes due to the politicized meaning of religion. Notably, Muslim countries have largely been excluded from a recent wave of quantitative research on…
Governing During a Culture War
As battles over transgender rights play out at the local level, this study offers the first large‐scale analysis of religion and U.S. local government officials’ views on key transgender rights policies. Drawing on our 2023 national probability sample of U.S. municipal, county, and school district officials, we examine officials’ attitudes toward policies related to restroom access and gender markers on driver's licenses. We find that religious a…
Sociology (19 works) · Political science (16 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (13 works) · Politics (10 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works)