Category Archives: Sociology

Sanctifying Suburbia reviewed in Christianity Today

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My book published in early 2025, Sanctifying Suburbia: How the Suburbs Became the Promised Land for American Evangelicals, was just reviewed in Christianity Today. I found two quotes from the review helpful for summing up the argument of the book and its implications. From earlier in the review:

In light of all this, it would be surprising if suburban sensibilities have not shaped evangelical faith and practice. As Miller argues, “It is not enough for researchers and pundits to consider the theological positions and political behavior of evangelicals; accounting for their spatial context is part and parcel to understanding the whole package of white evangelicalism” (italics mine).

And from a later part of the review:

Miller’s point is that the evangelical cultural toolkit appears to have been calibrated by patterns, experiences, and commitments common to suburban life. He’s careful to avoid claiming a direct, causal relationship between suburban norms and prevailing traits among evangelicals. But he makes a compelling case for drawing arrows of motive, means, and opportunity.

It should be easy enough to accept a narrower version of Miller’s thesis that suburban evangelicalism is “formed in regular moments in daily life and in interaction with the social and physical realities of the American suburbs.” It will be harder for many to accept that American evangelicalism in general is essentially suburban in its values and sensibilities…

In the aggregate, as Miller sees it, these institutions take a fundamentally suburban vision and prescribe it as an objectively Christian vision that can guide evangelical faith and practice in any environment. This doesn’t feel like a stretch to me. My own ministry experience and professional work has primarily involved churches in rural and urban environments. Pastors in both places frequently lament that the resources they rely on are clearly tuned to social realities outside their own. It’s fair to say, at minimum, that suburban sensibilities dominate American ministry materials.

Thanks to the magazine and Brandon O’Brien for reviewing the book.

Changing racial and ethnic diversity in the Chicago region

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New estimates from the Census Bureau show changing populations in the Chicago region:

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Metro Chicago’s Asian population is growing faster than any other racial or ethnic group, Census Bureau estimates show. Of the estimated 9.4 million people in the Chicago metropolitan statistical area in 2024, roughly 764,000 are Asian — almost 80,000 more than in 2020, data show. During that span, the Hispanic population also grew from about 2.22 million to more than 2.32 million. Meanwhile, the metro area’s white and Black populations both declined. White population fell from 4.83 million to 4.64 million, and the Black population declined from about 1.56 million to 1.50 million.

If these patterns continue, what significant changes could come to communities and the region? How does this affect residential segregation in the region (thinking back to the high levels of white-Black segregation documented in American Apartheid)? Or political representation and policies? Or day to day lives of residents? Looking at the regional level could obscure important differences at other levels.

I am also reminded how the city of Chicago has had roughly similar sized populations of white, Black, and Latino residents in recent years. Do the patterns above suggest that the city might be headed toward four groups being roughly evenly sized at some point?

Who will lead the way to address the need for hundreds of thousands of housing units in Illinois?

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A new study suggests Illinois needs a lot of new housing:

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Illinois has a shortage of about 142,000 housing units and must build 227,000 in the next five years to keep pace with demand, a number that would require recent annual production rates to double, according to a new economic study.

The joint study published Tuesday by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that although the rental and for-sale housing markets in Chicago and Illinois as a whole remain more affordable than many coastal cities, such as New York and Los Angeles, and some other states, Illinois still faces a severe housing shortage that is escalating affordability challenges.

National housing shortage estimates are wide-ranging, with Freddie Mac citing 3.7 million and the National Association of Realtors reporting 5.5 million.

And the recommendations for how to do this?

The authors suggest a variety of solutions, some of which Chicago officials and other state leaders are already working on, including easing zoning restrictions, quickening permitting processes, offering tax incentives to convert commercial buildings to residential units and increasing surtaxes on short-term rentals such as Airbnb. Aldermen recently took a step toward giving themselves the power to ban Airbnb and other short-term rentals from opening in their wards, a move that could potentially lead to an increase in housing supply.

This is not a new issue. And even drastic changes right now would not lead to 227,000 new units in five years. This is a long-term project that needs to be addressed.

One thought: this is an opportunity for Illinois to do something that could help lead the way in the United States. Here is why. It is a blue state and Chicago and its region dominates politics and perceptions. (This is not to ignore those living outside the Chicago area; there are just fewer of them.) It has more affordable costs compared to numerous other important cities. Chicago is still an important, world-class city. If Illinois could make a serious dent in providing affordable housing across the state, it could become a model for numerous other places. What works in Illinois might not work at all in New York City or Seattle or San Francisco or other super-heated housing markets. But it might work in Cleveland, Nashville, Denver, and other American metropolitan regions. Figure it out and Illinois and lots of areas could benefit.

For numerous reasons, it seems like politicians and business leaders in American cities and regions are hesitant to truly tackle affordable housing. But those who get out ahead of it can (1) help people living there and (2) provide models and tools for others to learn from and use.

The allure – and disappointment? – of suburbs like Penn Hills

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In August Wilson’s 1979 play Jitney, one of the Pittsburgh characters is working to buy a suburban home for his young family. In the opening scene of Act 2, Youngblood describes where the home is:

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I asked Peaches if she would go with me to look at houses, cause I wanted to surprise you. I wanted o pull a truck up to the house and say, “Come on, baby, we moving.” And drive on out to Penn HIlls and pull that truck up in front of one of them houses and say, “This is yours. This is your house baby.”

And a little later in the same conversation:

Wait till you see it. It’s real nice. It’s all on one floor . . . it’s got a basement . . . like a little den. we can put the TV down there. I told myself Rena’s gonna like this. Wait till she see I bought her a house.

In this conversation, the home in Penn Hills is part of achieving the American Dream: a pleasant place where a family can settle in and children can achieve.

Later in the same scene, the older character Becker hears of the potential move and approves of the community:

Good! They got some nice houses out there. That’s a smart move, Youngblood. I’m glad to see you do it. Ain’t nothing like like owning some property.

The vision of a suburban property contrasts sharply with the fate of the jitney station as the city will soon board up the property with some vague notion of redeveloping the land in the future.

But there are also hints that Penn Hills might not be a paradise. In the final scene (Act Two Scene 4), another character comments on Penn Hills:

They ain’t as nice as the houses in Monroeville. Most people don’t even buy houses in Penn Hills no more. They go out to Monroeville.

Reading this reminded me of Benjamin Herold’s book Disillusioned that includes Penn Hills as part of the argument of how the American Dream of suburban living did not extend beyond white families. Penn Hills grew quickly after World War Two, increasing from over 15,000 residents in 1940 to over 62,000 in 1970. But since then white families left (as development extended to Monroeville and other places), the population declined, and Black families who moved to the community found a suburb struggling to maintain its tax base and fund local infrastructure.

Penn Hills may have looked in the early 1970s to hold out hope regarding a successful suburban life but Herold suggests it cannot now promise the suburban American Dream. By the late 1970s, it was changing. The struggles of and in Pittsburgh neighborhoods that Wilson describes extended out to Penn Hills. What was a place of hope turned out to be different than depicted.

Researching social science in a video game

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In Civilization VII, players can research and have the civic “Social Question.” Upon doing so, they gain the benefit of social science:

From a Civilization wiki regarding the Social Question:

Civic life in the 19th century was in a state of flux, as the old medieval order began to decay and former farmers flooded into the city. Under feudal arrangements, local lords were at least putatively responsible for the well-being of their subjects, but in the city, no such noblesse oblige existed: workers were alone to face exploitation, squalid living conditions and poverty – the profits and industry that drove the industrial revolution were directly dependent upon the exploitation of those working the machines. Perhaps more influentially, those with power could see directly the suffering of those around them.

This, then, raised the “social question:” what is to be done? Is there a sense of justice that the state must respond to, or is this a matter for churches and humanitarian organizations? Workers began to see themselves as a collective force, to whom some justice was owed. From here came a wide variety of responses: welfare, humanitarianism, socialism, etc., which had in common a notion that squalor and suffering were not a natural occurrence that extends from the soil, but something that society both caused and could remedy. It is a question with which we still contend today.

The start of sociology and other social sciences came around the same time as industrialization, urbanization, revolutions, the rise of the nation state, and rationality. I wonder how many players would see this civic as key to progressing through the game; does a society need to address this social question or can we just get on to other exciting features of modernity?

I may just have to report back on what happens when the civic Social Question is enabled and social science is possible. While I have logged many hours of playing Civilization II earlier in my life, I have little experience with more recent iterations of the game. As a sociologist, shouldn’t a robust social science sector lead to a civilizational victory?

Society enables people more than it constrains them, part six

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My argument in a series of blog posts in the last week is that society enables individuals more than it constrains them. Rather than viewing modern society as a hindrance to individuals who want to be free to pursue their own objectives, we could instead look at how the human need and capacity for relationships is empowered by institutions, social networks, and society. And what humans can accomplish in societies far exceeds what they can do alone or in small groups.

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Looking back, this is one of the key things I have learned in 20+ years of studying sociology. In this particular social setting and time, we are often determined to see ourselves as individuals slowed down by society and its constraints. We cannot do what we really want or be who we really want to be. Our mass society wants us to conform and we want to break free.

But many of the features of life today that we know and take for granted came about because of mass society. Large cities. The Internet and social media. Clean water, available health care, and long life expectancy. Airplanes hurtling through the sky. Educational opportunities. Libraries. Music festivals. And much more.

On the whole, we could argue that society empowers people. To be in relationships with people and institutions can be good. They provide access to things humans not that long ago might only have only dreamed of. These changes might come with downsides – rapid change, traditions that faded away, a changed physical landscape, and so on – but humans working with other humans can lead to increased humanness, not just restrictions and limits.

One last example of how we might see this better. Multiple times, I have asked my Introduction to Sociology students to finish the course by writing a sociological autobiography (a project borrowed from several other sociologists). How would they narrate their life through sociological categories? I ask them to step back from just an individualistic view. In doing so, they both demonstrate that they can apply sociological concepts we have discussed throughout the semester and they can reflect on a different angle to their life: how their individual actions and experiences fit within relationships and social systems around them.

To repeat the argument, over the long term society enables people more than it constrains them. To not be in a society or connected to other humans is not ultimately freeing. How society is best ordered or organized is another matter; humans have promoted and experienced different approaches in different times and places. With relationships with other people and institutions, we can be empowered.

Society enables people through institutions and social movements, part five

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Every human is affected by institutions. These durable social collectives outlive individuals, have particular social structures, and can do things that individuals cannot. They are good examples of how society enables people more than it constrains them.

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Take for example a college or university. This past semester, I taught a class where we looked at American institutions of higher education over time. The oldest institutions are nearly 400 years old while many others have at least a century of history. These institutions have changed in important ways over time – think of the curriculum, their size, their purpose, their values – but they are recognizable in the past and present as places of learning.

No college or university is dependent on the actions of just one person or even a small set of people. We could tell the narrative this way; focus primarily on the president or founder or key leaders. At least some of them likely did consequential things. But there is a broader story to tell of the institution. What did the Board do? How did the college or university interact with legislators or the local community or other actors in higher education? What was the experience of faculty, staff, and students at different points?

As an institution, the college or university can enable people. It can offer classes, experiences, and opportunities that an individual or a small group could not do. There are things it cannot do but there is a reason these kinds of institutions have served societies for hundreds of years.

Institutions are durable and enabling. How might one change an institution or set of institutions? Social movements are mass movements of people working toward a common goal. They are relatively unusual; it takes a lot of effort to get large numbers of people to do something. To organize a local protest or march or campaign needs organizers, participants, resources, and a space. They get receive attention and can rally people to a cause.

And even then, social movements often need openings or certain conditions where what they ask for can be achieved. Hundreds of thousands of people might march within a country and nothing happens. Or it might take years and decades for a movement to see change happen. Successful movements are remembered for a long time because they harnessed the activity and actions of many people and changed societies.

In both of these examples, people are empowered. Institutions can constrain people and they are often associated with bureaucracy. However, bureaucracy exists because large complex institutions need ways to structure their activities. Social movements can fail to reach their goals or disappoint the people who participate. However, they can achieve things that only large numbers of people working together can do.

Society enables people through the human need for sociability, part four

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Humans are social beings. They need connections, interactions, and care. They require this early on as babies as newborns can do nothing for themselves. However, the need does not go away as people age; human sociability is essential to being corporately and individually human. Societies provide spaces and resources to be social.

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Surrounded in today’s ethos of individualism, we often like the idea that we can pick and choose relationships. We can go low contact or no contact with people who might have some claim to interact with us. We choose our friends. We pick our level of engagement in-person and online. We join the groups or organizations we want to join as long as they serve us.

All this choice might represent hard-fought wins of making our own choices free of what we perceive as constraints. But it can also provide the illusion that we do not need other people.

One research project has evidence regarding this issue. The long-running Harvard Grant Study found this regarding the importance of relationships over the long course of life:

“When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment. But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships,” Vaillant says. Close relationships, the data indicates, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. The study found strong relationships to be far and away the strongest predictor of life satisfaction, and better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, wealth, fame, IQ, or even genes. That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants.

And strong relationships are not only correlated with happiness, but with physical health, longevity, and financial success, too.

“The really surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health,” says Robert Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who is the current director of the study. “The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80. Strong relationships help to delay mental and physical decline. Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too. That, I think, is the revelation.”

This revelation can be seen in both positive and negative terms. Meaning that while strong community seems to protect us from the literal coughs and colds of everyday life, a lack of community is also deadly. “Loneliness kills,” Waldinger says. “It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”

Humans do better when they are not alone. They benefit from strong relationships and connections with others. This does not mean there will not be conflict or hurt in these relationships. Yet the long-term effects can be positive as sociability helps individuals and groups.

Human beings are not the only species that are social. At the same time, the social component of human life helps boost what humans can do. Societies are built on these relationships and interactions, also providing resources and norms regarding how this sociability happens. To interact with, relate with, and care for others is critical to the human experience and what humans can accomplish together.

Society enables people through social networks, part three

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Humans contribute to and benefit from being part of social networks. Social networks are made up of the relationships between people. These relationships can range from weak to strong, can be based on all kinds of social ties, and can connect large numbers of people (think playing “six degrees of Kevin Bacon”).

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The 2009 book Connected by James Christakis and Nicholas Fowler details features of social networks. They pass information. They connect people. They can heal themselves.

And they are superorganisms, enabling humans to do things in networks that individuals alone cannot. Yes, social networks can lead to negative outcomes such as passing diseases along. This is how epidemics happen. But networks give people access to information, to relationships, to resources. In one famous study, the friends of friends – “weak ties” – provide more access to jobs. A community can do things through its social networks that an individual or a small group would not be able to.

Take any group of which you are a participant. The social network approach examines not the group or institution as an actor but the sets of relationships between people. In a family, there are different kinds of ties and different kinds of resources passed through the network. A network diagram of a workplace would look different, dependent on the size of the network, the density of the relationships, and the shape of those connections. A national society might be much too big to map out but the ways that people are connected can be surprisingly small if we consider nodes and bridging ties.

People and actors can have both bonding and bridging ties. Bonding ties are ones that tend to be close relationships that bring individuals together. Imagine close friends. All enduring groups need some level of this. Think of a religious congregations. There are often close connections at the center of this group that help anchor the organization. Religious congregations also have the capacity to create bridging ties. They can reach out in their communities, working neighbors or other congregations or other organizations. These ties can link together groups that might not otherwise interact. Some congregations might be really good at one of these two kinds of relationships: forming tight bonds that endure or linking together parts of society that can benefit from collaboration. Social networks overall give humans opportunities to thrive. It is in the building and maintaining of relationships that individuals can access what they need and larger groups can operate. To be human is to be part of networks that can empower people.

Society enables people with sports teams and music group analogies, part two

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Have you been part of a sports team or in a music group? That collective had a goal, a purpose. Sports teams often want to win. Music groups have a musical work to put together. Both requiring working together, striving together to meet an objective.

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Of course, there are solo sports and music experiences. Numerous sports offer the opportunity to play be oneself, perhaps facing off against a single opponent or even just against some standard. Musicians can and do perform on their own. They can make music with their voice or instrument as a solo artist.

But there is something about the sports and music experiences as collectives that helps illustrate that society enables people more than it constrains them. What one person can do in either field can be very impressive but what a group can do together is amazing. And if you have been part of such an experience, it is a unique one.

Start with being on a sports team. You and your teammates are trying to play hard and win. In team sports, the outcome rarely depends on the actions of just one person; the team is working in sync to accomplish its goals. When all of the team members are contributing, the team feels great. The collective team can do what one player by themselves cannot.

Or imagine being part of a chorus or a rock band. Each person has assigned tasks. Music is often written in such a way to bring together multiple efforts for the same song. When everyone is doing their part, the resulting sound can be profound. The feeling of participating can also be notable; the work of the group can transcend the actions of the all the individuals.

This is not to discount the efforts of individuals. Solo performances require skill and can be moving. But they are different compared to groups playing and making music together. Whether working as a jazz trio or a symphony orchestra or a drumline, the group can do things that the individuals alone cannot. They can make music that is by the group.

Throughout life, we participate in groups and collectives. Society is just one massive-sized collective. We could see the larger goals of societies as analogous to the “win” a sports team seeks or the piece we are playing. We do not always succeed but what we can accomplish as a team or group or society can be empowering.