Congregational Network Analysis

Congregational network analysis applies social network analysis to religious communities, treating congregations and their members as nodes connected by ties of friendship, kinship, recruitment, and shared participation. Rather than studying individuals in isolation, it asks how the structure of relationships within and between faith communities shapes who joins, who stays, how commitment spreads, and how movements grow or fracture. Sean Everton's Networks and Religion (2018) organizes the field around the idea that ties bind people into communities, loose them from old commitments, build up movements, and tear them down, showing across recruitment, conversion, and decline that relational structure is often a better predictor of religious outcomes than individual attributes alone.