Sociologists study the impact religion has on child development

[Major Nikon]

49. It's a pay-to-play journal

Which means the author pays to have the study published. Not all pay-to-play journals are bad, but the one's that are decent typically start out at a $1500 fee which covers the costs of legitimate high quality peer review and publication costs. MDPI journals typically charge $200-300 which right away tells you they aren't paying much for peer review and more likely are publishing just about anything brought to them which inevitably leads to the promotion of junk science masquerading as real science.

I think the why is much simpler. The author has a side business of writing non-peer reviewed books, probably in hopes that his university will accept them and charge hapless students hundreds of dollars for it as a textbook. No doubt he will then use that book to further prop up his next "research" project further building on the house of cards.

This guy is nothing more than a scam artist that many universities tolerate for one reason or another. The main difference is this one throws in the promotion of evangelicalism, which no doubt creates an environment where people are going to be overly cautious about calling bullshit for fear of allegations of intolerance.