← Back to Religious Leader Tracker

The Dataset

The Religious Leader Tracker is built on a hand-researched dataset covering current leadership across 150+ religious denominations worldwide: who leads each body, when their tenure began, and how many members the body claims. It is maintained continuously as leadership changes occur.

leaders.csv Primary leadership table — source of truth membership-data.json Membership figures with sources leaders-research-log.csv Research audit trail for tenure dates

Schema — leaders.csv

Column	Description
`religion`	Top-level religion (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, …).
`Denomination`	Major branch or family within the religion (e.g. Catholic, Sunni, Mahāyāna).
`sub denomination`	Intermediate grouping where one exists (e.g. Eastern Orthodoxy, Pure Land).
`sub denomination 2`	The specific body being tracked (e.g. Russian Orthodox Church, Soka Gakkai).
`members`	Claimed membership where known; `n/a` otherwise. Figures also live in `membership-data.json` with sources.
`source`	Source for the membership figure.
`leader`	Current leader, usually as `Name / Title`.
`since`	Tenure start date. Day precision (e.g. `May 8th 2025`) where research allows; month or year precision otherwise.
`days`	Unused in the data — days in office are computed live on the site.

Methodology

Leadership entries are researched primarily from Wikipedia infoboxes and official denominational sources, then refined for date precision. Every tenure-date decision is recorded in leaders-research-log.csv, including the field used (e.g. term_start), the source type, the source URL, and matching notes — so any figure on the site can be traced back to where it came from.

Membership figures are as claimed by the denomination or as estimated by the cited source; they are not independently verified.
Day counts are only computed for tenures with day-precision start dates.
Recent changes are published in the Succession Log and its RSS feed.

Use

You are welcome to use the dataset for research or journalism with attribution to vimal.my. If you spot an error or a leadership change I have missed, email me.