Belief at the Ballot Box

David Campbell is the Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy and the director of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative. His research focuses on civic and political engagement, with particular attention to religion and young people. Campbell’s most recent book is See Jane Run: How Women Politicians Matter for Young People (with Christina Wolbrecht). Among his other books are Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics (with Geoff Layman and John Green) and American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (with Robert Putnam). In addition, he has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and—every political scientist’s dream—Cosmopolitan.

Lauren Jackson is a deputy editorial director at The New York Times and the host of Believing, a weekly newsletter on modern religion and spirituality, which she created in 2025. She has won multiple awards for Believing from the Religion News Association. This year, she was a Poynter Fellow in Journalism at Yale University.

Previously, she was a writer and editor for The Morning, The Times’s flagship newsletter, and an editor for The Daily, the Times’s flagship podcast. She has also published photography for The Times from six countries. Before The Times, Lauren worked as CNN, the United Nations and the International Rescue Committee. She has degrees from Oxford University and the University of Virginia, and she

 is on the board of the American Association of Rhodes Scholars, She is also the editor of The American Oxonian, a journal of politics and letters at Oxford University.