Tony Carnes and I met for breakfast at Penelope, a homey little cafe across Lexington Avenue from First Moravian Church. Penelope sits one block north and three avenues east of Marble Collegiate Church, where Norman Vincent Peale preached for 52 years, and it is a 2.8-mile drive from Sons of Moses, the tiny Lower East Side synagogue where you can still hear Lithuanian Yiddish.

This is how Tony Carnes sees New York City. A Texas native, who came to New York as a young man to study at the New School, and who is now “over 50 years old,” Mr. Carnes is in the middle of a two-year effort to find every house of worship in the five boroughs.

Along the way, Mr. Carnes, with three part-time assistants and other freelance helpers, is posting his findings online to nycreligion.info, his “public square,” he called it, where people can read about “the sizzle of religion in New York — the kosher sizzle! The halal sizzle!”

Mr. Carnes is in search of every church, cathedral, synagogue, shtiebel, mosque, temple, zendo and ashram. His crew gathers information by asking for it, in person. By the end of 2011, they will have driven every street in New York.

“We went out on Tuesday to Jamaica and Cambria Heights, in Queens,” Mr. Carnes said. “We drove along Jamaica Avenue, and we stopped at every site.”

If a clergy member, or someone who just seems official, answers the door, they ask four standard questions, including “If you were mayor, how would you change New York City?”

The mayor question, Mr. Carnes said, tells him “if their focus is just on their own church or synagogue or mosque. Or do they have a neighborhood interest? Or do they have a citywide interest?”

Sometimes the work is easy: a big church or synagogue announces itself with elegant signs; a secretary answers the door; the pastor or rabbi or imam is in. If nobody answers, they leave a questionnaire and call later. Sometimes they make serendipitous finds.

“For lunch,” Mr. Carnes said, “we went to a Pakistani restaurant, and one of us said, ‘Look, there’s a sign for a mosque upstairs.’ ”

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/nyregion/19beliefs.html?_r=2