The Database of Religious History: Data Science Approaches to Religious Cultural History

The Database of Religious History (DRH; http://religiondatabase.org) is a quantitative and qualitative online encyclopedia that aims to systematically collect information on past religious groups from around the world. By collecting data directly from experts, but in a standardized form, the DRH offers a novel digital humanities resource for both the scientific and religious studies communities. It answers two pressing needs. For scientists interested in testing hypotheses about religious change over space and time, it provides a completely unprecedented, infinitely-expandable source of high-quality data. Researchers will be able to answer historical questions about the relationship of religious belief and practice to altruism, prosociality and virtue and the link between religion and large-scale societies with an academic rigor never before possible. For the religious studies community, which faces a level of information overload unmanageable with currently existing technologies, the DRH serves as a forum for scholarly debates and an always up-to-date, instantly accessible record of current scholarly opinion, sourced directly from a global scholarly community, brought together on a multilingual, open-source platform. Built over the past three years on a skeleton budget and largely volunteer labor, the DRH already boasts an innovative architecture, impressive interface and a growing number of contributors. To become fully operational and sustainable, however, it requires at least another year of intensive technical and personnel development. We are seeking funds to bridge this critical period necessary to secure the future of the project. By the end of the proposed grant period, we intend to have (a) at least 100 new entries, (b) implemented an easy to use and easy to maintain database and interface, and (c) established the DRH as an independent, non-profit foundation that will continue as an ever-growing resource for both the scholarly community and general public.