Sarah Lee

Education

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
M.A., University of California, Berkeley
M.A., Peking University
B.A., Dartmouth College, cum laude

Dr. Sarah Lee is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Baylor University. Her research and teaching interests include religion and politics, authoritarian regimes, and state-society relations. Her research has been published in Politics and Religion, Local Government Studies, and the Journal of Contemporary China. She is currently completing her first book, Serving Two Gods: Explaining Selective Religious Repression in China, which is under contract with Oxford University Press. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Global Religion Research Initiative. She received her Ph.D. and MA in Political Science from U.C. Berkeley, MA in International Relations from Peking University and BA in Government from Dartmouth College.

Courses at Baylor

PSC 3304 Comparative Government

PSC4364 The Governments and Politics of the Asia-Pacific Region

PSC4370 Politics and Religion

Publications

Lee, Sarah. (2026) “Self-Censorship in Communist China: Text Analysis of Sermons from State-Registered Churches,” Politics and Religion, 19(2), 234-261. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755048326100315  

Lee, Sarah. (2026). “Between Agent and Governor: Local Officials’ Selective Implementation of Religious Policies in China,” Local Government Studies, 52(4), 711–735. https://doi.org/10.1080/03003930.2026.2633724 

Lee, Sarah and Kevin J. O’Brien. (2021) “Adapting in Difficult Circumstances: Protestant Pastors and the Xi Jinping Effect,” The Journal of Contemporary China, https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2021.1893556 

Lee, Sarah. (2023) "Pastors in China’s New Era," ChinaSource Quarterly. https://www.chinasource.org/resource-library/articles/pastors-in-chinas-new-era/