From accurate counts to effects on residents, methodological challenges complicate studying religious congregations and communities. This talk discusses these challenges and how they have been addressed in two major urban areas in North America: Chicago, IL and Toronto, ON. Comparative data are presented on various dimensions of these cities' local religious ecology, including the density of congregations, religious tradition breakdown (e.g., Catholics versus Mainline Protestants), and changes over time, such as the number of closures and other transitions. The projects in these cities show the promise of methodological rigor for answering theoretically important and timely questions about congregations and community life.
Kraig Beyerlein is an Associate Professor of Sociology, Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society, and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is also Co-Principal Investigator of the Chicago Congregation Project (CCP) and a visiting research fellow at the Canadian Institute for Empirical Church Research at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto.