To explore religion and the American suburbs further, I briefly discuss available data sources and recommended readings. These are not meant to be exhaustive but rather to be starting points. There is much to consider and the particular variations of suburban faith in specific settings means there is much to discover.

First, two sources of data I have found valuable. The 2020 U.S. Religion Census sought religious congregations by county throughout the United States. Available at theARDA.com, anyone can look up congregations in a county. So, if you know a suburban county (and these are critical to defining metropolitan areas), you can get a sense of the number of religious congregations and adherents across places.

The second source is more local. Within a neighborhood or community, a resident should be able to research local congregations and religious activity. Such work could include: visiting local religious congregations; talking to members of religious communities, clergy, and community members about religious activity; seeking out records of congregations at a local historical or genealogical society; examining old printed Yellow Pages and searching social media and websites for congregations; and reading local histories. Doing one of these or some of these can reveal a lot about religious groups.

In terms of existing research, here are twelve books that I have found very valuable and have cited multiple times in work I have done. These works highlight different religious traditions and suburban settings:

Cavillo, Jonathan. 2020. The Saints of Santa Ana: Faith and Ethnicity in a Mexican Majority City. New York: Oxford University Press.

Diamond, Etan. 2000. And I Will Dwell in Their Midst: Orthodox Jews in Suburbia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Diamond, Etan. 2003. Souls of the City: Religion and the Search for Community in Postwar America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Dochuk, Darren. 2011. From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism. New York: W. W. Norton.

Eiesland, Nancy L. 2000. A Particular Place: Urban Restructuring and Religious Ecology in a Southern Exurb. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Howe, Justine. 2018. Suburban Islam. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hudnut-Beumler, James David. 1994. Looking for God in the Suburbs: The Religion of the American Dream in its Critics, 1945-1965. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

McGirr, Lisa. 2001. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Mulder, Mark T. 2015. Shades of White Flight: Evangelical Congregations and Urban Departure. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Mulder, Mark T. and Gerardo Martí. 2020. The Glass Church: Robert H. Schuller, the Crystal Cathedral, and the Strain of Megachurch Ministry. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Numrich, Paul D. and Elfriede Wedam. 2015. Religion and Community in the New Urban America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wilford, Justin G. 2012. Sacred Subdivisions: The Postsuburban Transformation of American  Evangelicalism. New York: New York University Press.

My own published work explores some of these areas – find these works listed here. I look forward to more reading and research in this area and continuing to learn from the work of others.