Melton, J. GordonFerguson, ToddFoertsch, Steven2024-05-032024-05-032023Melton, J. G., Ferguson, T., & Foertsch, S. (2023). The Others: Finding and Counting America’s Invisible Churches. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 62(4), 901–912. https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12875https://hdl.handle.net/1911/115492The 2010 U. S. Religious Census: Religious Congregations and Membership Survey (RCMS) is the most comprehensive picture of U.S. religious life, county by county. How thorough is the RCMS in covering local religious groups? To answer this question, three county snapshots were performed with collected data compared to the RCMS 2010 reported numbers. Data suggest that there has been an underreport by as much as 25 percent of the number of local congregations in these counties. New and emerging religious movements and denominations as well as ethnic congregations comprise much of this percentage, making it more imperative for scholars to develop methodologies and frameworks in order to capture these “others” and invisible churches in America.engExcept where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the terms of the license or beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.Journal articleFindingCountingAmericasInvisibleChurcheshttps://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12875