Declines in religious affiliation and church attendance in the United States have been well-documented, which political scientists often attribute to the prominence of the Religious Right in American politics. These scholars posit that the politicization of religion deters religious participation, especially among those on the political and theological left. However, the existing research looks only at aggregate trends in the involvement of religious organizations in politics and levels of religious participation. Using data from the National Congregations Study, a representative sample of American congregations, we examine the impact of politicization on church membership rates at the congregational level. Employing ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and cross-lagged structural equation models, we show that more politically active congregations were more likely to see growth in membership over time. Using data from the General Social Survey, we also offer evidence that partisans on both ends of the political spectrum are more likely to engage in religious switching than independents, suggesting that those joining new congregations may be politically motivated. Thus, while political activity may cost religions adherents at the aggregate level, politicization benefits individual churches by attracting members from a politically motivated niche market, signifying that political outreach can be an effective strategy for congregations.

Prior work has shown party activists and religious divisions to be two of the leading causes of party polarization in American politics. Using the Convention Delegate Studies, we examine the interaction between these two culprits and their impact on party polarization. We leverage a novel measure of secularism in the latest wave of the Convention Delegate Studies to demonstrate that active secularism is distinct both conceptually and statistically from low religiosity. Furthermore, we show that both religiosity and secularism drive party activists to take more extreme policy positions, to identify themselves as more ideologically extreme, and to exhibit less support for compromise. As the Democratic and Republican Parties have become more secular and religious, respectively, these results suggest religious polarization may compound existing divisions between the two parties and exacerbate the partisan divide in American politics.

Immigrants to the United States often fail to develop partisan identities, which can be a political impediment. While the development of partisanship has received substantial attention in the existing literature, further research is needed to understand the origins of partisanship for new immigrants who lack the socialized psychological attachments that drive partisanship for many Americans. I theorize that preceding changes in salient social identities may facilitate the formation of partisan attachments as an adaptive response to a new environment. Specifically, I contend that religious conversion, an adaptive change in one's religious identity, increases the probability of political adaptation among Latino immigrants, the largest immigrant group in the United States. Using data from a 2006 Pew survey of Latino religious life, I show that conversion among Latino immigrants is associated with a greater partisan identification, which suggests religious conversion may function as an intervening adaptation in the evolution of partisanship.

The question of whether judges’ personal characteristics and values bias their decision making has long been debated, yet far less attention has been given to how personal characteristics affect public perceptions of bias in their decision making. Even genuinely objective judges may be perceived as procedurally biased by the public. We hypothesize that membership in a religious out‐group will elicit stronger public perceptions of biased decision making. Using a survey experiment that varies a judge's religious orientation and ruling in a hypothetical Establishment Clause case, we find strong evidence that judges’ religious characteristics affect the perceived legitimacy of their decisions. Identifying a judge as an atheist (a religious out‐group) decreases trust in the court, while identifying the judge as a committed Christian has no bearing on legitimacy. These results are even stronger among respondents who report attending church more often. Thus, we argue that perceptions of bias are conditioned on judges’ in‐group/out‐group status.

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