Jeffrey Hadden

Jeffrey K. Hadden (1937–2003) was an American professor of sociology. He began his teaching career at Western Reserve University and then at the University of Virginia commencing in 1972. Hadden earned his Ph.D. in 1963 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was trained as a demographer and human ecologist.

While teaching urban sociology at WRU, he co-authored with Louis H Massotti and Calvin J. Larsen Metropolis in crisis: social and political perspectives (F.E. Peacock 1967, ISBN B0006D80Y). With Massotti, he co-edited The Urbanization of the Suburbs (Sage Publications 1973) Hadden published numerous scholarly books and articles and essays on religion approaching the study of religion from the perspective of social movements theory and characterized his primary interest as the comparative study of religion and politics.

During the 1960s, Hadden studied and wrote about the involvement of liberal Protestant clergy in the Civil Rights Movement. He was probably best known for his studies of religious broadcasters and the emergence of the Christian Right in America during the 1980s, studying the ministries of Jerry Falwell in nearby Lynchburg, and Pat Robertson in Virginia Beach.

During the years of peak civil rights activity in the South, Evangelical clergy consistently criticized the involvement of liberal clergy on the grounds that religion and politics shouldn't mix. Hadden's interest in religious broadcasters was significantly aroused as it became increasingly evident to him that they were themselves making overtures toward involvement and influence in the political process.

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