Thirteenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Why do some religious groups achieve global popularity while others fail to spread or simply die out? How can we track changing religious expressions in contemporary contexts and compare these dynamics to historical data? This paper analyzes the potential of the mixed-methods Database of Religious History (DRH) to address these questions. While the DRH has pioneered a digital interface to analyze cultural evolution through the long durée, it currently lacks data on a specific set of variables that would be required to test hypotheses relating to the cultural morphologies, which can be tested through a New Religions dataset. This study describes the methodological process of creating a poll on New Religions and recruiting 100s of expert participants. I focus on how the tech interface can expands academic engagement with Digital Humanities and facilitates new forms of computationally-engaged interdisciplinarity testing about the dynamics of religious change.