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Overview
Places of worship in Massachusetts, including churches, synagogues, and mosques. Places appearing in this layer are those overseen/listed by the Massachusetts Council of Churches, Massachusetts Roman Catholic Dioceses, Anglican Diocese of New England, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, JewishBoston, Shiva, or Islamic Council of New England.
The layer is stored in ArcSDE and distributed as PLACES_OF_WORSHIP_PT.
Production
MassGIS generated this dataset by address-matching (geocoding) lists of places of worship data to MassGIS Master Address Database (MAD) points. In cases where addresses did not immediately match to the MAD, development locations were manually refined using the most current Google imagery and other web sources.
The dataset was compiled from these sources between November 2023 and December 2024:
Churches
Churches in this layer belong to a governing body that consolidates the information for all of their congregations.
Many of the churches in this layer were obtained from the Massachusetts Council of Churches for their 16 member denominations:
- African Methodist Episcopal
- American Baptist
- Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
- Diocese of the Armenian Church in America
- Evangelical Covenant
- Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts
- Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts
- Evangelical Lutheran Church
- Greek Orthodox
- Presbyterian Church USA
- Religious Society of Friends
- Salvation Army
- Swedenborgian Church
- United Church of Christ
- United Methodist Church
- Unitarian Universalist
The council does not oversee Roman Catholic churches. For these, data was gathered from the websites of the Archdiocese of Boston, the Eparchy of Newton, the Diocese of Fall River, the Diocese of Springfield, and the Diocese of Worcester.
Anglican Churches were collected from the Anglican Diocese of New England.
Orthodox Churches were collected from the Orthodox Church in America, Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, and the Eastern American Diocese Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.
Mosques
The Mosques in this layer were obtained from the website of the Islamic Council of New England.
Synagogues
The Synagogues in this layer were obtained from Shiva and JewishBoston (the Synagogue Council of Massachusetts appears to be closed based on MassGIS research).
Attributes
The Places of Worship datalayer's point attribute table has the following fields:
Field | Description |
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NAME | Name of the place of worship |
ADDRESS | Place of worship's physical address |
CITY | Place of worship's city or town (postal) |
GEOG_CITY | Place of worship's city or town (geographical, based on MassGIS' TOWNS_POLY layer) |
ZIPCODE | Place of worship's zip code |
TELEPHONE | Place of worship's phone number |
Place of worship's email address | |
WEBSITE | Place of worship's website URL |
MAIL_ADDR | Place of worship's mailing address |
LEADERSHIP | Name of place of worship's religious leader |
YEAR_EST | Year that the place of worship was established |
DENOM | Denomination; for churches, the sect of Christianity |
ORG | Local or regional organization for the denomination |
TYPE | Place of worship type Church Mosque Synagogue |
SOURCE | Source that provided the place of worship's data |
MAD_ID | Master Address ID from table MAD.MAD_MASTER_ADDRESS for linking to MassGIS' Master Address Database. (Not applicable to data in Boston.) |
Maintenance
MassGIS maintains this datalayer and will make periodic updates based on information from the Councils.
In February 2025, places of worship from the Orthodox Church in America, Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, and Eastern American Diocese Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia were added based on public feedback.
In 2022, Anglican and Evangelical Lutheran churches were added, as well as one independent church (South Congregational Church - Church by the Lake in Braintree). One Synagogue was also moved, Congregation Dorshei Tzedek in West Newton.
Date published: | February 3, 2025 |
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