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Journal Article 1: Glass, J. L., Sutton, A., & Fitzgerald, S. T. (2015). Leaving the faith: How religious switching changes pathways to adulthood among conservative protestant youth. Social Currents, 2, 126–143. doi:10.1177/2329496515579764

Abstract: Research revealing associations between Conservative Protestantism and lower socioeconomic status is bedeviled by questions of causal inference. Religious switching offers another way to understand the causal ordering of religious participation and demographic markers of class position. In this article, we look at adolescents who change their religious affiliation across four waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and then observe their transition to adulthood using four crucial markers—completed educational attainment, age at first marriage, age at first birth, and income at the final wave. Results show that switching out of a Conservative Protestant denomination in adolescence can alter some, but not all, of the negative consequences associated with growing up in a Conservative Protestant household. Specifically, family formation is delayed among switchers, but early cessation of education is not.

Journal Article 2: Lehmann, D. (2013). Religion as heritage, religion as belief: Shifting frontiers of secularism in Europe, the USA and Brazil. International Sociology, 28, 645–662. doi:10.1177/0268580913503894

Abstract: This article draws a distinction between religion as heritage and as belief, and also shows the complications which arise in predominantly Christian countries when ‘new arrivals’ and evangelical, Pentecostal, or conversion-led, movements claim the recognition which has historically been afforded to hegemonic churches. Using evidence from Europe, the USA and Brazil it reveals the uncertain implementation of the state–religion boundary in the law, in taxation and in politics, and shows how even the most secular states allow religious institutions special exemptions, albeit in different ways. It asks whether religion is not producing demands amounting to a separate citizenship and why religious expression should require privileged treatment additional to freedom of speech in a secular world where religious affiliation is regarded as a matter of personal choice. It also questions the assumption of market theories of religion that more and more intense religion is good for religion and good for society.