How the Study Works
For our pilot study, we are surveying approximately 250 congregations across the United States, using a nationally derived sample that includes a wide range of congregation types, sizes, and locations.
What Data We Collect
Congregational programs and ministries
Community outreach and partnerships
Internal support and member care
Engagement with social and civic issues
Sustainable practices
What Makes This Study Unique
The CMPS Sampling Frame
A key innovation of this project is its use of the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-election Survey (CMPS) as a sampling frame.
The CMPS is a large-scale national survey (N ≈ 15,000) designed to oversample racial and ethnic minority populations in the United States. Unlike most national religion datasets, which rely on predominantly white or institutionally reported samples, the CMPS includes respondent-reported information about congregational affiliation, allowing researchers to identify faith communities across a wide range of racial and ethnic backgrounds.
From this dataset, over 4,000 religious communities were identified, including approximately 3,200 Christian congregations. Because of the CMPS’s oversampling design, the resulting sampling frame includes robust numbers of Asian, Black, Latine, multiracial, and white congregations, enabling systematic comparison across groups that are often underrepresented or combined in national studies.
This approach makes the Mosaic Congregations Collaborative one of the first studies to:
- Build a comparative national sample across multiple racial and ethnic congregational types
- Avoid treating minority congregations as a single undifferentiated category
- Link congregational life to both individual-level survey data and contextual neighborhood conditions
The result is a uniquely rich dataset that allows researchers, faith leaders, and funders to better understand how congregations function within the real social environments they inhabit.
Interactive Data Visualizations
This site will include interactive tools that allow users to explore:
- Geographic distribution of congregations across the United States
- Comparative profiles of congregations by racial and ethnic composition
- Measures of congregational activity across service, security, solidarity, and sustainability
- Links between congregational life and neighborhood-level indicators such as poverty, stability, and demographic change
These tools are designed for both scholarly analysis and practical use by faith leaders and organizational partners.
Beyond the Survey
We are also conducting interviews with congregational leaders to better understand how this work looks in practice.
As the project develops, this site will include: