Religious Congregations & Membership: 2000

Frequently Asked Questions

I. How to Begin Using the RCMS CD-ROM:

1. Place the RCMS CD in the CD-ROM drive of your computer.

2. Click on the My Computer icon on your desktop and select your CD drive.

3. The RCMS data will be displayed, open the Setup File.

4. You should then see the “Setup icon” double click it to load the files.

5. The next screen will walk your through the software installation process.

6. When the process is complete go back to your “My Computer” right mouse click the “Setup Icon” and it will ask if you want to create a Shortcut for your desktop answer yes. It will create the Religious Congregation icon.

7. When you double click the Religious Congregations icon a small box will appear with:
MAPS: State or US the next heading is MEMBERSHIP REPORTS:
Counties (1 state), Counties (more than 1 state), etc.

8. For counties within 1 state you choose that category and click the CONTINUE
button.

9. You will then use the pull down menu to choose the state you wish to access.

10. You may then choose the county and/or counties that you wish to look at data for (if you want to look at more than 1 county after your first selection you must hold down the CRTL key on your keyboard until all counties you wish to include in this particular report are chosen).

11. After your county selection(s) have been made click on the CONTINUE button for the program to tabulate your report.

12. The report is generated in Portrait page form, but in order to see all your data if you wish a printed copy you must change your page setup to Landscape.

Any problems discovered with the operation of the CD program may be e-mailed to The Glenmary Research Center: grc@glenmary.org. Notices about any reported problem will be posted at www.glenmary.org/grc/cd. Neither the GRC staff nor ASARB, however, will provide technical support for use of thus CD-ROM.

II. Re: Classification of Religious Bodies

The classification of various religious bodies into "Evangelical Protestant," "Mainline Protestant," "Catholic," and "Other" categories was created by the staff of the American Religion Data Archive (ARDA), who did the programming for this CD-ROM based on what is available on www.TheARDA.com ; it is slightly adapted from, Steensland, Brian, Jerry Z. Park, Mark D. Regnerus, Lynn D. Robinson, W. Bradford Wilcox, and Robert D. Woodberry. 2000. "The Measure of American Religion: Toward Improving the State-of-the-Art." Social Forces, 79 (1): 291-318.

The ARDA, ASARB (the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies) and the Glenmary Research Center (GRC) recognize that this is only one of many classification systems that could have been used.

III. Re: Alaska

The mapping software used to create this CD-ROM does NOT include Alaska. At a future date this will be made available on ARDA’s Web site: www.TheARDA.com

Additional Resources:
• Methodology and Cautions
• Media release dated Sept. 20, 2002
• Key findings from study
• Key findings for specific religious bodies
• Resource people to contact
• History and background of the study
• Maps
• Data tables and rankings
• To preview 2000 study online
• To order