Andrew L. Whitehead

Andrew Whitehead is Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives (theARDA.com) at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University Indianapolis.

Whitehead is one of the foremost scholars of Christian nationalism in the United States. He is the author of American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church, which was awarded the 2024 Gold Medal Book Award for Religion from Foreword Reviews and the 2024 Midwest Book Award winner for Religion & Philosophy.

He is also the lead author of Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States—along with Samuel Perry—which won the 2021 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. In 2019, his co-authored article “Make America Christian Again: Christian Nationalism and Voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election” (Sociology of Religion, 2018) won the Distinguished Article Award for both the Association for the Sociology of Religion and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

In addition to his award-winning research, Whitehead has served as Principal Investigator or co-Principal Investigator on external research grants totaling over $11.5 million.

In recognition of these efforts, Whitehead was awarded the 2023 IUPUI Research Trailblazer Award and the 2023 Outstanding Tenure Track Faculty Award from the IUPUI School of Liberal Arts.

The author of fifty peer-reviewed journal articles and two books, Whitehead is a sought-after speaker and has shared his work with diverse audiences: academic and public, religious and secular. Whitehead’s research on Christian nationalism has been featured across several national outlets including The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, CNN Today, The Economist, Rolling Stone, and The Guardian. He has been interviewed on NBC News, National Public Radio, and the BBC, among others, and is routinely contacted for perspective on religion and politics from national and international news media. He has also written for The Washington Post, Time, NBC News, and the Religion News Service, among other outlets. Along with his work on Christian nationalism, Whitehead’s research also explores childhood disability and religion.

Whitehead serves as Executive co-Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives (theARDA.com). The ARDA is the world’s largest online religion data archive and is currently funded through generous support from Lilly Endowment, Inc., the John Templeton Foundation, and the Templeton Religion Trust.

From 2014 to 2020 Whitehead was a faculty member in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice at Clemson University. While there he was awarded early promotion, with tenure, in 2019. He also received the College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences Award for Excellence in Research, Emerging Scholar (2017) and the College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences Associate Dean’s Recognition of Scholarship in Journal Publications (2018).

Professor Whitehead earned his bachelor’s degree in Psychology at Purdue University. He completed his Ph.D. in Sociology at Baylor University in 2012.

Andrew Whitehead’s CV can be found here.