One thing is certain, if you follow political scientist Ryan Burge on Twitter. You are going to read quite a few things that you agree with and quite a few things with which you will disagree.

Here’s the key to that statement: It really doesn’t matter who “you” are. You can be a liberal mainline Protestant and you will read things that please you and things that infuriate you. Ditto, if you are Southern Baptist Convention leader.

If you are a religious “none,” in Pew Research Center terms, then Burge is mapping your life and beliefs, one chart after another. If you are a nondenominational, independent evangelical/charismatic leader, Burge was one of the first researchers who grasped that your world is now the fastest growing corner of the marketplace of American religion.

Burge makes many Southern Baptists mad. He also makes many Episcopalians and liberal mainliners mad, even though Burge is, himself, a progressive Baptist pastor/thinker as well as a political science professor at a state university. I would imagine, however, that leaders on the right and the left are learning that they are going to have to study the trends shown in all of those Burge charts on Twitter (and in his books).

To be honest with you, I can’t remember when I spotted Burge’s byline and I’m not sharp enough, in terms of computer skills, to spot the oldest item in the nearly 4,000 items that show up in a Google search for “Ryan Burge” and “Terry Mattingly.” I’m guessing 2018 or so. However, Burge has been cooperating with GetReligion for several years now, with me retweeting, oh, hundreds of his tweets with a “Yo. @GetReligion” slug. He also has allowed me to re-publish some of the essays he has written for the Religion in Public weblog (and for Religion Unplugged).

I bring all of this up for two reasons.

(1) Many news consumers who continue to follow legacy media may have seen him featured last night in a “60 Minutes” feature about the Rev. Bart Barber, the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

(2) Burge and I recently agreed on the format for a new GetReligion feature that we will call “Do the Math,” in which he will take four or five of his data-backed tweets and then connect them to spotlight trends that journalists need to follow.