D. Michael Lindsay - Rice University



Research		HOME BIOGRAPHY RESEARCH CURRICULUM VITAE TEACHING SPEAKING Department of Sociology Rice University MS-28; 552 Sewall Hall 6100 South Main Street Houston, Texas 77005 Phone: 713-348-5511 Email: mlindsay (at) rice (dot) edu
	Dr. Lindsay studies leadership and elites and how they relate to American society. His long-range research agenda, called the Study of Public Leadership, closely examines the role leaders play in wider society and how social, personal, and moral dynamics influence their public leadership. The Study of Public Leadership, begun in 2003, endeavors to collect the largest set of interview data on high-ranking public leaders ever amassed. Dr. Lindsay hopes this will reinvigorate the scientific study of leadership at the elite level.
For the past several years, he has focused this work on American evangelicals--a group that has significantly risen in prominence within a short time. This project, entitled “Faith in the Corridors of Power,” included interviews with over 350 elite informants as well as archival and ethnographic research. Among these, Lindsay interviewed two former Presidents of the United States; over three dozen Cabinet secretaries and senior White House staffers; 100 presidents, CEOs, or senior executives at large firms (both public and private); two dozen accomplished Hollywood professionals; over 10 leaders from the world of professional athletics, and a handful of leaders from the worlds of philanthropy and the arts. It examines evangelicalism’s rise in four arenas of influence: politics and government; business and corporate life; arts, entertainment, and the media; and higher education. Lindsay concludes that elite networks—in these four domains as well as in religious settings—contributed greatly to the evangelical movement’s ascent between 1976 and 2006. He also found that a shared evangelical faith unified leaders from different walks of life while also providing a sense of meaning to their work and a repertoire of practices that helped them manage the challenges they face as leaders.
Results from this study have appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Sociology of Religion and will be appearing in American Quarterly . Lindsay’s book, which details the full results of the study, will be published by Oxford University Press in the fall of 2007 . Lindsay is also completing an essay on evangelicals and their political leaders for an edited volume published by the Russell Sage Foundation.

Dr. Lindsay has undertaken related research projects—both qualitative and quantitative—including work on organizational liminality, the challenges of studying elites, the structure of leadership in contemporary America, private foundations and their religious philanthropy (with Robert Wuthnow) and methodological issues surrounding ways evangelicals are measured (with Conrad Hackett).
Lindsay’s work in the sociology of religion began ten years ago while working with George Gallup, Jr., at The Gallup Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. Their co-authored works include Surveying the Religious Landscape: Trends in U.S. Beliefs and The Gallup Guide: Reality Check for Twenty-First Century Churches. He has also authored a dozen research reports on topics ranging from friendship and spiritual transformation to religion and the economy.
In addition to internal support from Princeton University and Rice University, Lindsay’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the Religious Research Association, and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.