God Is Alive and Well: The Future of Religion in America
Frank Newport, long-time Gallup Editor-in-Chief and one of the nation's best known pollsters, has spent the major part of his working life studying public opinion -- much of that public opinion about religion. Newport has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan and has taught and published on the sociology of religion. For the last 20 years, he has been monitoring religion in America based on Americans' self-reports -- including data from more than a million interviews Gallup has conducted on a nightly basis since 2008. Newport, past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, is author of Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People (Warner Books, 2004) and coauthor with Stuart Rothenberg of The Evangelical Voter. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, Newport grew up in a staunch Southern Baptist tradition and spent five years at the world's largest Baptist university. Newport's father was a Southern Baptist theologian, author, and religious educator, as were Newport's grandmother and grandfather. Although he is a neutral scientist who studies religion analytically, Newport's background provides a valuable window into how religion works in the U.S.