Samuel Perry
Professor | Books: Growing God's Family; Addicted to Lust; Taking America Back for God; The Flag and The Cross; Religion for Realists | CV: tinyurl.com/4hs86ntn
- Every social media site has jerks that need blockin' apparently.
- Just out at @poqjournal.bsky.social. Why is it critical to consider race when discussing Christian nationalism? Because it often works differently for White & minoritized adults, often corresponding to racial in-group interests & identities. It's not *always* reactionary IOW. doi.org/10.1093/poq/...
- Are you serious with this article? Who effing cares?!?! www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
- Illustration from a medical text book in 1875 showing the physical difference between "the masturbator" and "the abstainer." I share this with my students to illustrate how moral culture shapes the medicalization of particular practices, even in ways obviously inconsistent with reality.
- Speaking to a conference of Catholic priests in San Francisco this week on the topics of porn use, sexual shame, religion, & families. Once again blown away that I get to do stuff like this for a living. Traveling, meeting fascinating people, talking about important & interesting stuff. So fun.
- Business idea. Develop software for evangelical lay people & clergy that monitors their online activity and reports their anonymous accounts & social medial trolling behavior to accountability partners.
- Convinced all these dudes (and the few ladies they platform) have burner accounts for this purpose. religionnews.com/2025/05/12/t...
- New from me at Journal of Illiberalism Studies (bsky.app/profile/ills...). Free to read! I show how Christian nationalism, in combination with indicators of religious in-group solidarity & expectation of ethno-religious dominance, helps fuel Republican outrage. www.illiberalism.org/taking-it-pe...
- Convinced all these dudes (and the few ladies they platform) have burner accounts for this purpose. religionnews.com/2025/05/12/t...
- I suppose my judgement would differ based on the kind of work, but at my work (a university), heck yes.
- Recently heard about some academics using AI for book peer-reviews too. Just dumbfounded. Holy sh** y’all. What are we doing?
- So picture what Ryan Walters has done to Oklahoma public education (48th in the nation), but now it’s every aspect of Oklahoma’s governance. www.koco.com/article/ryan...
- Does putting "accountability software" on one's computer keep Christian men from masturbating to porn? Our survey data suggests it does not. What factors predict lower rates of porn use among Christian men? Having better mental health. Software solutions are capitalism replacing actual soul-care.
- One reason Oklahoma's low education ranking is so important is that it destroys the right-wing argument that low education scores are due to racial minorities. Can't use that argument in Oklahoma. Just failed Republican policies leading to poorly educated White folks. www.newson6.com/story/681ba6...
- There it is. Over 90% of families taking advantage of tax credit for private schools were already in private schools, and the vast majority of them have incomes over the median. Nearly half make over $150k. www.news9.com/story/681d75...
- A hundred theses and dissertations related to American Catholicism were just proposed.
- Reactions to the new Pope are yet another good example of how our religious evaluations are (now, maybe always) downstream of partisan in-group concerns. Conservatives dismissing him with no other knowledge other than hearing he's like Francis. Progressives celebrating him cuz he criticized Vance.
- Thrilled to be a co-presenter at the 20th Anniversary De Jong Lectureship Series at Penn State. Mark your callendars for October. My co-presenters & I will be addressing pronatalism, a topic about which more data are being generated by the minute! Zoom is available. Just register with the QR code.
- Maybe it's because I started in academia already having kids, but I've legit never thought this. Summers (& any holiday breaks for that matter) are a total disruption of the normal work flow. Family time is absolutely worth it, of course, but I never think of such breaks as somehow more productive.
- Quite the sobering introductory sentence.
- My writing time is never so intense, focused, and fun as when I'm working on a project that's helping me put off some other writing obligation.
- “The warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that scatters whole families—sundering husbands and wives, parents and children, sisters and brothers, leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth desolate.“ —Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
- I like where this energy is going @usatoday.com. But let's broaden it out to say "Trumpism is a historical failure." Yes, Trump of course. But not *just* Trump. Don't forget every sychophantic politician & oligarch implementing the MAGA agenda. www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...
- Just wrapped up the last course of the semester and with that 10 years of teaching as a professor. Can’t believe it’s been that long.
- While Oklahoma leaders like Ryan Walters work to destroy separation of church & state by directing public funds toward religious schools, they also work to make public education even worse (already 49th in the nation).
- Ironic that West Virginia has the highest rate of Fentanyl overdoses per capita (by far) and has been among the top 1 or 2 states in voting for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024.
- Narcan, opioid overdose reversal medication, saves hundreds of thousands of lives a year. But the Trump admin plans to terminate a $56M annual grant program that distributes doses and trains emergency responders in communities across the country to administer them. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04...
- Call me idealistic. But I think brazen political gaslighting should still shock & piss us off. I never want to roll my eyes at it, shrug my shoulders, & say "Well, that's just Trump." Whether it's a Republican or Democratic politician, blatant bullsh** should outrage us.
- Revealing charts from the @nytimes.com on Trump's first 100 days. These are the ones I most want to show Trump supporters and ask "Did you vote for THIS?" Single-handedly tanking our markets? Destroying the dollar? Gutting medical research? Causing the quickest case of national buyers' remorse ever?
- This is a good minimum. But even if it's a slow research year/season for you & you haven't submitted stuff in a while, that doesn't mean you're free from expectations of academic citizenship. If you're collecting a paycheck as a professional academic, you should keep doing peer-reviews regularly.
- Haha, everyone. Very funny. Looks like all academia decided to stop peer-reviewing articles & didn't tell me as a practical joke, so I'd get asked to review a manuscript every other day while my manuscripts take 6+ months for decisions. Good one, y'all. But joke's over now. Please review stuff.
- Trump is under water by nearly 20 points among all adults. But he's ahead 44 points among White Evangelicals. All "religious" labels tell us about ethnicity, politics, & theology. White evangelicals clearly illustrate how ethno-politics is often the more salient feature. Eva theology is downstream.
- Charity is great. But despite all the "govt shouldn't take care of the poor; that's the church's job" rhetoric, charitable giving/serving has NEVER met the need on its own. More often such rhetoric just means the poor need to help themselves. That'll be clearer now. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/u...
