Recent media portrayals link climate change skepticism to evolution skepticism, often as part of a larger "antiscience" tendency related to membership in conservative religious groups. Using national survey data we examine the link between evolution skepticism and climate change skepticism and consider religion's association with both. Our analysis shows a modest association between the two forms of skepticism along with some shared predictors, such as political conservatism, a lack of confidence in science, and lower levels of education. Evangelical Protestants also show more skepticism towards both evolution and climate change compared to the religiously unaffiliated. On the whole, however, religion has a much stronger and clearer association with evolution skepticism than with climate change skepticism. Results contribute to scholarly discussions on how different science issues may or may not interact, the role of religion in shaping perceptions of science, and how science policy makers might better channel their efforts to address environmental care and climate change in particular.

Research has increasingly highlighted the importance of business leaders allowing people to bring their whole selves to work. And religion is an important part of the whole self for many. However, we lack the large-scale national data needed to explore how Americans see the connections between religion and work. Here, from “Faith at Work: An Empirical Study”—a novel, nationally representative dataset—we explore the extent to which working Americans (N = 8767) see their work as a spiritual calling and/or experience work conflict because of their religious faith. We find that one fifth of workers identify their work as a spiritual calling. Our findings also suggest that experiences of religious conflict and discrimination are shaped not only by religious beliefs, but also social location. The initial results highlight future avenues for research and demonstrate the potential of the “Faith at Work” data to shed further light on how religion enters the workplace.

Recent scholarship argues that beliefs in biblical literalism might keep conservative Protestants out of STEM. Two of the groups that are most underrepresented in STEM, black Americans and Latinos, are also two of the most religious populations in the United States, and specifically overrepresented in theologically conservative Christian traditions. Yet, prior work also suggests that churches help promote positive educational outcomes. To interrogate the potential relationship between STEM educational aspirations and religious faith, we explore how black and Latino Christians perceive the potential impact of science education on religious faith. Analysis of 40 interviews reveals that both black Americans and Latinos have concerns about science teachers being biased. Yet, the groups differ in their assessment of the danger of anti-religious bias. Black Americans put confidence in the Christian community to incubate children from harm to their faith; therefore, they believe the effect of science education on religious faith is either neutral or positive. Latinos, however, raise concerns about the authority of science educators, rather than science curriculum. Overall, the results shift the conversation on conservative religion and science education from solely discussing content to exploring issues of bias and authority.

This study examines the historical establishment and shifting residential access to city parks over time. It begins by engaging and extending a theory of urbanization as socioenvironmental succession. It then assembles and analyzes longitudinal data on city park creation and neighborhood change in Houston from 1947 to 2015. Results reveal how socially privileged residents have long enjoyed unequal access to city parks as well as strong influence over where new ones are established. At the same time, growing minority populations have managed to gain more equitable access not by having new parks come to them so much as by moving into neighborhoods where Whites once lived. These dynamics obscure past processes and patterns of inequality while allowing newer, unexpected ones to emerge. We conclude with a discussion of what these findings imply for understanding not just unequal access to city parks but broader processes of urbanization.

Science and secularization have been linked in scholarship and the public imagination. Some suggest that scientific training leads to loss of religion. Yet there is only speculation about the processes by which scientists might become less religious and whether such processes are confined to the west or hold across national contexts. Using original survey data ( N = 5,006) of biologists and physicists in India, Italy, and the United States, as well as 215 in-depth interviews, we examine the religious transitions of academic scientists and the factors that they say prompted their religious shifts. We find some support for work suggesting that scientific training is secularizing. Yet we also show that, across national contexts, the nonreligious disproportionately select into scientific careers. Furthermore, we find that scientists tend not to identify science as the primary factor in their own religious transitions. These results challenge long-held assumptions about the relationship between science and secularization.