The religion maps

[mmcirvin]

Here is a set of maps of religious affiliation in the United States by county. (Michael Bacon says that they're "all over the blogosphere", but I guess I'm not as much on the ball as he is, since I just saw them now.)

Anyway, the maps are not so surprising except for the first one, which is extremely surprising if you imagine that American organized religiosity falls along red state/blue state lines, because it doesn't. There's basically a belt of heavy religious affiliation running north-south through the middle of the country from North Dakota to Texas, and a big unsurprising splotch of Mormons in Utah and eastern Idaho (though the rest of the Great Basin is pretty secular); but mildly liberal Minnesota and swing-state Missouri are about as religious as heavily Republican Nebraska, and Massachusetts far more so than Pat Robertson's stomping grounds in Tidewater Virginia! What's going on? Where did the Southeastern Bible Belt go?

I think Bacon's got it basically right: it's all about the dominance of different churches. In the Southeast, the Southern Baptists overwhelmingly dominate religious discourse and consequently are very powerful in spite of the overall moderate degree of religious practice. In most of the rest of the country, Catholics have a plurality, though in most places that's a mild illusion: Protestants are probably the majority, but are fragmented into different denominations. In the Northeast, the Catholics have a particularly strong presence (and generally have values that don't comfortably fall into American liberal/conservative categories), but there's a lot of other stuff going on too; around Boston there's a lot of activity in the extremely liberal UU and UCC churches, for instance.

I also think it's interesting that that actual Bible Belt running north/south through the middle is not made up of any one particular church; it's Lutherans up north, Southern Baptists in Oklahoma and Texas, and Catholics nearer the Mexican border.

Comments

[asienieizi.livejournal.com]

"What's going on? Where did the Southeastern Bible Belt go?"
I'm going to say a massive demographic shift that began taking place in the past 15 or so years, first noticed by meself during the first(2nd?) Bush election. I remember being gobsmacked when I saw the red/blue political map for the first time and I wondered what happened too.
When I'd lived in Oregon and Washington they were firmly Republic and now, that I5 corridor is now shown as Democratic Blue. I'm theorizing it's from the massive migration of ex-Californians who are usually Democrats.
BUT I HAVE NO PROOF! (other than the fact that I myself was one of those migrating Californicans.)
That reminds me: Upon first arriving in Idaho in 1985 I was greeted by many signs and bumper stickers that said:
"Welcome to Idaho, now go home" and " Don't Californicate Idaho".

[http://users.livejournal.com/erasmus__/]

In Oregon, in 1974, Governor McCall had official billboards that said "Thanks for visiting, now go home". I saw them.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

That shift is still going on. I currently live and work in the Seattle area, but a non-trivial number of my mostly liberal, mostly secular (I mean, even those of us who are religious like to have our religion and our politics on separate plates) classmates from library school have recently moved to the South, many of them to southeastern states, because that's where the jobs are.

I don't know how much that's the case in other professions, but I wouldn't be surprised if those which rely on a population to serve in an intellectual capacity (teachers and librarians, for example) are expanding in such a way as to draw workers from outside the region. It'll be interesting to see what effect this has.