by Andrew Whitehead, Associate Professor of Sociology, IU-Indianapolis, Co-Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives

Whenever I teach undergraduates, I try and remember how different their world is compared to when I grew up in the 1990s. A time before home internet where I was forced to consult our series of encyclopedias if I had a question.

Given most of my students were born after 9/11, things are quite different. We are now living in a time with an overabundance of information available to us at every moment. One quick Google search serves millions of possible answers.

This overabundance presents problems, though. We are left to consider which sources to trust, trying to determine if the algorithm has provided us with information or resources that contain the answers we need.

I’m guessing I’m not the only one who, when searching online for a product or service, is quickly overwhelmed by the tidal wave of information. Soon enough I’m closing my browser and feeling even more uncertainty than before.

In my work co-directing the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), I consistently hear congregational leaders sharing similar stories—they have questions, they’re searching for answers, but sometimes it feels overwhelming to try and make sense of all the available information online and determine what or who to trust.

In the classroom I now try to equip my students to be better consumers of information, knowing where to go for answers and how to determine who or what is worth their time and trust.

In a similar vein, I’m continually excited to equip congregational leaders with religion data and resources they can trust through theARDA.com. These are just a few of the most-used resources that congregational leaders find helpful.

Congregational leaders and pastors use this resource to gain a data-driven sense of a given congregation’s context. This information helps them to know how best to serve their communities, as well as what types of ministries their congregations might start.

Consider the story of one Catholic priest who was introduced to the CPB during an ARDA workshop here in Indianapolis. He was involved in the Indianapolis Archdiocese’s education efforts and there were ongoing conversations around whether his diocese needed to offer languages other than English, and if so, which ones.

Some of the decision makers held assumptions—not based on any data—that the surrounding community members would be best served by offering Spanish. However, he was able to use the CPB to demonstrate that the diocesan schools’ assumptions around language needs were outdated. Many more folks from Southeast Asia were populating those communities. A focus on Southeast Asian immigrant Catholics was necessary.

Another local religious leader shared how initiating conversations with community partners can at times be difficult. Using the CPB, however, changed this narrative and being able to bring local demographic information to the table resourced these strategic discussions.

The consistent positive feedback we receive from congregational leaders using the CPB demonstrates how it resources people and groups coming from different perspectives to understand and communicate possibilities and challenges more clearly. This leads to more fruitful and generative conversations.

Beyond the CPB, there are several other resources on the ARDA that congregational leaders we work with find helpful.

The ARDA’s Religious Group Profiles offer data and information for thousands of religious groups operating in the United States. These profiles are a powerful way to quickly find answers to questions like, “How many Southern Baptists adherents are there in the US over past few the decades?” Or, “Which US counties have the most Catholics?” Or, “Where are the United Methodist Church congregations located in my community?” You can even view membership rate maps for every state.

The Religion Census resource provides membership reports for counties, metro areas, cities, and states over time or in present-day maps. Congregational leaders can quickly determine which groups in their counties or cities are growing, declining, or treading water. The Congregations tab on the ARDA homepage is another one-stop shop for resources useful to congregations.

In a time where there is so much information at our disposal, but little in the way of determining which information will be most helpful to congregational leaders, the ARDA exists to make high-quality and appropriate data easily accessible. And the best part? It’s all free.

Andrew Whitehead is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives (theARDA.com) at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at IUPUI.

Whitehead is one of the foremost scholars of Christian nationalism in the United States. He is the author of American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church, which released August 2023 from Brazos Press. He is the lead author of  Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2020)—along with Samuel Perry—which won the 2021 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

In recognition of these efforts, Whitehead was awarded the 2023 IUPUI Research Trailblazer Award and the 2023 Outstanding Tenure Track Faculty Award from the IUPUI School of Liberal Arts.