The Restructuring of American Religion (1988) provided a still-influential framework for the study of American religion that centered the emergence, after World War II, of a left–right religio-political divide driving mobilization around conflicts understood as moral. But in the last 30 years, the landscape of American religion has been transformed by decline in commitment to mainstream religious institutions, especially white Christian ones, and by the emergence of large groups of Americans who are religiously indifferent or who embrace spirituality or nonreligion.
In 2018, 3.6 million eviction cases were filed in U.S. county courts with a substantial percentage of the plaintiffs having filed multiple eviction lawsuits. Recent estimates for 2023 suggest the number of debt collection lawsuits range from $2.5 to $4.5 million. Multiple studies have examined the impact of evictions and debt collection on individuals, but less attention has been paid to the combined experience of debt collection and eviction lawsuits and how these lawsuits cluster in households and neighborhoods.