“Simply a Sign of the Season? Christmas Trees as Cultural Ciphers in the Governmental Management of Diversity.” American Sociological Review. Forthcoming in 2026.
Authors: Gary Adler (Pennsylvania State University), Damon Mayrl (Colby College), Eric Plutzer (Pennsylvania State University), Jonathan Coley (Oklahoma State University), Rebecca Sager (Loyola Marymount University), and Elise Wolff (Pennsylvania State University)
Abstract: How do local governments symbolically manage the diversity of their residents? Most research analyzes the administrative or legal policies of governments towards racial, ethnic, and/or immigrant diversity. By contrast, we examine the preferences of local government officials for cultural objects that symbolically manage religious diversity, since religious identity is increasingly salient to social conflict. We use a novel survey experiment and open-ended survey responses with a representative sample of local government officials. Our experiment randomly varies the content of holiday displays on government property to measure distinct diversity management strategies. Results show that government officials prefer the assimilationist strategy of a lone Christmas tree over multiculturalist and exclusivist strategies, and that a Christmas tree is perceived as the content least likely to be a governmental endorsement of religion. To understand these patterns, we theorize the Christmas tree as a cultural cipher. A cultural cipher is a well-known cultural object that affords a range of meanings and resonates across social identities as innocuous, allowing it to mean many things to many people. We show how this “weak culture” object is especially useful for an assimilationist approach to managing social diversity because of how it sustains the meanings of majority groups.
“A Farewell to Public Religion? Retheorizing and Assessing the Public Relevance of Religion.” American Journal of Sociology. Forthcoming in 2026.
Authors: Damon Mayrl (Colby College), Gary Adler (Pennsylvania State University), Jonathan Coley (Oklahoma State University), Rebecca Sager (Loyola Marymount University), Elise Wolff (Pennsylvania State University), and J. P. Miller (Independent Scholar)
Abstract: What is the state of religion in American public life? We demonstrate widespread analytic confusion in the concept—“public religion”—typically used to answer this question and develop a novel framework that disaggregates “public religion” into three analytically distinct dimensions—politicized religion, civic religion, and public religious culture. Drawing on national survey data and interviews with religious leaders in communities in California, Maine, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania, we show that these three dimensions have divergent dynamics. Further, we show that these dimensions take distinct forms in urban and rural settings. We find that the growth of politicized religion is posing significant challenges to civic religion and public religious culture, especially in rural areas. Our approach provides new insights into how religion is woven into the American civic fabric, questions longstanding assumptions about the role of religion in civic life, and offers new research pathways for scholars of religion, politics, public policy, and democracy.
“Religion and the Everyday State: How Religious Leaders and Local Law Enforcement Officials Interact in Eight U.S. Communities.” Sociology of Religion. Forthcoming in 2026.
Authors: Jonathan Coley (Oklahoma State University), Rebecca Sager (Loyola Marymount University), Gary Adler (Pennsylvania State University), Damon Mayrl (Colby College), and Daniel Cueto-Villalobos (University of Minnesota)
Abstract: Scholarship on religion-state relations in the United States often focuses on abstract debates over religious freedom and disestablishment concerns, with limited attention to how religious and state actors interact in everyday life. This study addresses this gap by examining policing as a relatively neglected yet common site of local-level religion-state interaction. Drawing on 183 in-depth interviews with religious leaders in eight U.S. communities, we identify four modes of interaction with law enforcement. We find many religious leaders, particularly white Christians, “celebrate” police through public shows of support. Most leaders also “collaborate” with police on pragmatic concerns like traffic control. Finally, a smaller subset of leaders, often from marginalized backgrounds, engages in “coerced cooperation” with police to resolve community complaints or “confront” police through protest. Our analysis thus identifies a variety of ways that religious and state actors interact and shows how such interactions are stratified. We conclude by outlining a new agenda for the study of religion-state relations that better accounts for the domains where religion-state interaction most commonly takes place and interrogates the real-world consequences of such interactions for religious and state actors alike.
“Governing During a Culture War: Religion and Local Government Officials’ Attitudes toward Transgender Rights Policies in the United States.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. Published (online first) in 2026.
Authors: Jonathan Coley (Oklahoma State University), Gary Adler (Pennsylvania State University), Damon Mayrl (Colby College), Eric Plutzer (Pennsylvania State University),Rebecca Sager (Loyola Marymount University), and Gabby Gomez (Macalester College)
Abstract: 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 affiliation, religiosity, biblical literalism, and Christian nationalism are significantly associated with officials’ opposition to transgender rights policies. Other attributes, such as party identification, age, gender, and sexual orientation, are also linked to officials’ policy views. Our findings underscore how certain religious affiliations, behaviors, and beliefs are associated with resistance to transgender rights in local communities, offering new insights into the relevance of religion to today’s culture wars. The findings also hold implications for street-level bureaucracy theory.
“Confidence in Elections among U.S. Local Officials: Effects of Social Trust, Partisanship and Political Ambition.” PLOS One 20(6): e0324794. Published in 2025.
Authors: Eric Plutzer (Pennsylvania State University), Gary Adler (Pennsylvania State University), Rebecca Sager (Loyola Marymount University), Jonathan Coley (Oklahoma State University), and Damon Mayrl (Colby College))
Abstract: The U.S. public’s confidence in elections is intensively studied in the last decade but little is known about election confidence among locally elected officials, whose roles and community status may influence public opinion. Using a nationally representative survey of local election officials, we compare election confidence among local elected officials with that of the general public. Local elected officials are more likely to trust both local and national elections. We theorize factors that affect local officials’ trust in elections, including partisan context, state leadership election denial levels, and political ambition. We show how social trust, partisan identity, and ambition significantly influence local officials’ confidence that local and national results reflect the intention of voters. We conclude by showing how the relative lack of intensive partisan polarization among local elected officials is especially important at keeping election distrust low among local officials.
“Religion-State Interaction at the Local Level: Key Findings from a Survey of Religion and Local Elected Officials.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 61(1): 217-229. Published in 2022.
Authors: Gary Adler (Pennsylvania State University), Damon Mayrl (Colby College), Jonathan Coley (Oklahoma State University), Rebecca Sager (Loyola Marymount University), and Eric Plutzer (Pennsylvania State University)
Abstract: 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 requests), and their preferences for religion-state relations. Our results show that local elected officials are no more religious than the general adult public, that they interact with religion in their formal governance at low rates, and that a quarter strongly prefer increased state engagement with religion. Minority religious affiliation, Democratic political affiliation, and urban context predict opposition to religion-state engagement. We describe how local elected officials may produce local regimes of religion-state interaction that vary by geographic location and suggest pathways for future research.
“Religion at the Frontline: How Religion Influenced the Response of Local Government Officials to the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Sociology of Religion 82(4): 397-425. Published in 2021.
Winner, 2022 Distinguished Article Award, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
Authors: Gary Adler (Pennsylvania State University), Selena Ortiz (Penn State), Eric Plutzer (Penn State), Damon Mayrl (Colby College), Jonathan Coley (Oklahoma State University), and Rebecca Sager (Loyola Marymount University)
Abstract: 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 officials’ behaviors and attitudes is unknown. Using a unique, two-wave, representative survey of frontline officials, we examine how religion influenced officials’ reported personal health behaviors (mask wearing, social distancing) and attitudes toward institutional reopenings. Results show high levels of compliance with public health recommendations, but religious nationalism negatively influences all outcomes. Other religious factors, like affiliation and attendance, vary in their influence and even work differently among officials compared to the general public. Frontline officials are key for understanding how religion influences the pandemic and state action more generally.
“The Frontline of Church-State Relations: Local Officials and the Regulation of Religion in a New Era.” RGK Center Working Paper Series. Published in 2020.
Authors: Gary Adler (Pennsylvania State University), Damon Mayrl (Colby College), Rebecca Sager (Loyola Marymount University), and Jonathan Coley (Oklahoma State University)
Abstract: Interactions between religion and government, between church and state, have occurred with regularity throughout U.S. history. Over the past several decades, a new church-state regime of accommodationism has encouraged broader and more extensive church-state interaction. Nearly all such interaction is local in nature, but little scholarship systematically focuses on a key actor: frontline officials. We introduce the concept of frontline officials to research on government and religion, explaining why frontline officials have been previously missing. Frontline officials, appointed and elected, regulate church-state interaction, making decisions about whether and how to promote or limit closer engagement between religion and government. This regulation is often informal and discretionary, leading to diverse church-state patterns at the local level. We theorize the cultural and contextual factors that shape frontline officials’ ways of interacting with religion, then report basic results from a first-ever survey of frontline officials. Our results show that, among frontline officials, there are a wide range of attitude toward church-state relations, as well as practices that bring religion into relationship with the state. We suggest that scholars focus on the patterns of how church-state interaction happens at the frontline and the individual, contextual, and cultural factors for why church-state interactions differ across communities.