The Association of Religion Data Archives

The ARDA allows you to interactively explore the highest quality data on American and international religion using online features for generating national profiles, GIS maps, church membership overviews, denominational heritage trees, tables, charts, and other reports. Over 450 surveys and other data collections are available for online preview and virtually all can be downloaded free of charge.

The Lilly Endowment awarded a grant for the founding of the American Religion Data Archive (ARDA) in 1997 and the archive went online with 33 data sets in 1998. Social scientists and their students were the target audience and the ARDA served them well. By November of 1998, the ARDA website had 2,760 visitors per month. Over the last few years, however, the ARDA’s audience has greatly expanded and the website now receives over 40,000 visitors and 2,000,000 hits each month. As one of the first and most innovative online archives, the ARDA has served as a model for many. The ARDA, currently housed at Penn State University, is the centerpiece of a new collaboration among several universities, including Baylor. The current ARDA provides online archiving that limits attention to religion in North America and relies on principal investigators to submit existing data files. The proposed project will work in the international arena, generate and seek new data sources, and produce reports, publications, and resources tailored for journalists and a wider lay-friendly audience. Rather than remaining a passive Internet archive for depositing and withdrawing data, the goal is to produce and promote new information on religion in the international arena. New data, press releases, and research publications will all serve to set the agenda for future research on religion around the globe.

We invite you to use the research widgets below (provided by The ARDA).

U.S. Maps Using tools developed by Social Explorer, Geographic Profiles allow you to visually see the social, economic, demographic, and religious landscape of neighborhoods, cities, states, regions, and the entire United States. Once you are viewing a map you can generate a summary report using a variety of options. Enter a zip code to see a map now: Widget provided by:

U.S. Congregational Membership Reports Explore congregational membership in every county, state, and urban area in the United States. Based on the Religious Congregations and Membership Study collected by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies this is the most complete census available on religious congregations and their members. Enter your 5-digit zip code to see a religious profile now: Widget provided by: