Religion is an understudied aspect of American politics. However, religion is an important part of American political culture and has a strong influence on behavior and social-moral attitudes. Voters and policy makers use religion as a guide in their decision-making process and to validate their actions. Most religion and politics research is centered on voter attitudes and interest group power. There is little research done on heuristics used by politicians to communicate with religious voters. Dr. James Guth has the most comprehensive research on the subject but has not approached it in the same way I have. In using campaign and US House of Congress member websites I have been able to codify religious rhetoric by politicians which I can compare to other members of Congress, their social-moral positions on issues, proposed legislation, district dynamics, and voter behavior.

In compiling the data for my dissertation, Religion as a Political Tool: The Use of Religious Frames by Politicians in the US House of Representatives, 2011-2017 (2019), I created a broad database on religious statements and social attitudes of House members. I plan to expand my database and continue to use it for research and publishing purposes. My database uses campaign and House member websites to measure religious statements and attitudes on abortion by politicians. My next step is to expand my research to look at coded statements on race, gender, sexuality, identity, the 2nd Amendment, and patriotism over time and the issues alignment with religious rhetoric. I think I can find the same mechanism at play with these issues that I found with the issue of abortion. Additionally, in my research I used caucus membership as an independent variable. I want to expand my use of caucus membership as a variable. Others have used caucus membership in their research, but I found practically no scholarship on using caucus membership to measure religious attitudes across the US Congress.

I want to expand my database to include proposed legislation on social-moral issues to investigate the link between religious rhetoric, legislation, and the success of that legislation. From my preliminary research it appears there is a trend by members who use the highest levels of religious rhetoric put the majority of social-moral bills on the floor of the House. However, there are low levels of co-sponsorship on those bills. Many of those bills concern the same issues (ie. abortion, women’s health, anti-LGBTQ etc.) but the authors do not support similar bills from House colleagues. Lastly, the vast majority of those bills die in committee, and often the author is a member of the committee. Arguably, these bills are disingenuous campaign actions put forward to placate base voters from the member’s districts. I have found no research which examines these issues with a quantitative measure. I believe I have found a way to do that. 

I worked closely with Dr. Dennis Pirages. Dr. Pirages spearheaded the study of environmental politics, and from my work with him I developed in interest in the effects of environmental problems on people in poverty and people in ethnic/cultural homogeneous areas. Additionally, Dr. Pirages encouraged me to examine religious attitudes on environmental issues. There are increasing cleavages in environmental attitudes between the age groups of religious adherents. Some religious groups have begun to adjust their positions on the environment to satisfy members. That shift, as far as I have been able to ascertain, is not being researched from the political science perspective. I want to do that research.

I was fortunate to be at University of Nevada. Las Vegas (UNLV) as it achieved its Tier I Research status. There was a drive to shift the graduate program to a strong research agenda and I took advantage of this by completing the UNLV Research Certification separate from my graduate program. Additionally, I had the opportunity to work closely with the scholars and researchers of the Brookings Institute-Brookings Mountain West as the Political Science Coordinator. Lastly, I was the last graduate student of Dr. Ted Jelen before he passed away. Dr. Jelen is the reason I came to the UNLV as he is a preeminent researcher in religion and politics in America. All of these experiences have given me a firm foundation in research and the desire to publish so as to share my findings.