Information on Sections of the American Church

Today we highlight a few great databases and linkbases that will be helpful toward an understanding of current church (the organized and formalized bits of it) dynamics in the United States of America.

• The Hartford Institute for Religion Research: This vast website contains thousands of resources concerning "religion" (primarily Christian) and contemporary issues. The databases and study reports focus on a good range of subjects and inquiries (objects of study range from individual members to congregation).



• The National Congregations Study: This data is getting a bit old, but it still can be useful. It's a 1998 and 2007 of (mostly Christian) congregations in the United States. I like how the data can be analyzed by hand; using a variable selection interface, I can create my own tables.




• U.S. Congregations Study: This 2001 survey of 300,000 participants from 2,000 U.S. Congregations (again, mostly Christian--avg. size: 150) gives you free access to selected results. I've heard this one quoted a number of times in various reports on NPR.



• The American Religion Data Archive:Find general area-correlated denominational data organized by "adherent" and by "number of congregations" on this site. Displayed in maps and charts (ranging from nation to county). The maps are nice, but the data's a bit vague.



• CARA Publications: A great resource to begin research on the Catholic Church in America. It's nice because it's free.



• The Barna Group: George Barna's hope was (and to some degree, still is) to provide evangelical leaders with the information they would need to get a sobering view of the beliefs and behaviors of the differnt segments of Americans. So he started "The Barna Research Group" about a decade ago. Unfortunately, he's finding that data does very little to produce fruitful action: when people see depressing numbers, they usually just get depressed, blame some amorphous power-block (such as "the Media") and call it a day. Not exactly what Barna hoped for. So now, as you see, he's changed his company name to "The Barna Group," he's writing more "here's-the-steps-you-need-to-take" books, and doing more hands on consulting.
  
  In any case, his research does continue and you can find both new and old data here. One note: Barna pre-defines such terms as "evangelical" and "born again." One does not classify as a born again Christian simply because she answers "yes" to "are you a born again Christian"; rather, Barna would only classify her as born again if she responds in a certain way to two of the questions in his interview. So make sure to read his definitions before you read his data!
  
  The Barna group seems to have taken away the free by-topic research. In my cursory look, I only found Archived Barna Updates going many years back. Less helpful. But that's what you get when you don't pay, I suppose.

These are great places to start a formalized study of Christianity in Contemporary American Culture, if I'm ever interested in starting such a study. In the mean time, they're fun places to hang out.