If a pastor wants to nudge people toward changes in their opinions, I suggest the bottom-up theory. There's tremendous power to sustain the church if you start with a good nucleus and move out through groups.
—George Gallup, Jr.

I majored in religion at Princeton University and intended to go into the Episcopal clergy. Toward that end I worked one summer in a church in Galveston, Texas. It was a black church with a white rector for the first time in nearly one hundred years. My job was to help him run the summer Bible school, the baseball team, and similar activities.

It was a great experience. Indeed if I were yet to go into the ministry—and I sometimes still long for it—I would want to serve in such a setting. The rector I worked with was instrumental in breaking down racial barriers in the church.

While weighing the choice of ministry or survey research (my father's field), I realized that research gave me much of what I was looking for in ministry: a way to help people. It could give ...