He earned his B.A. from Middlebury College in 2003 and his M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Baylor University in 2009. He recently co-authored American Secularism: Cultural Contours of Nonreligious Belief Systems, with Joseph Baker from NYU Press. His dissertation examined the relationship between Buddhism and the sociology of religion, by examining the ways in which the study of American Buddhism can inform the theories of the sociology of religion, as well as applying the techniques and methodologies of sociology to this particular topic. He is the editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion. He was a post-doctoral fellow at ISR from 2009-2011 where his work involved analysis of the Gallup World Poll to determine the current state of religion in the world as well as the ways in which religion interacts with other societal and individual characteristics.