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Today I happened to come across a fascinating set of maps that use congregational membership data and census data (both from the year 2000) to put together a picture of the geographical distribution of various religions and denominations.
The map of "religious adherents" (the sum of all 149 religions and denominations collated by the membership data, divided by the total population by county according to the 2000 census) is interesting. While the overall trend isn't exactly surprising (increasing "religiosity" closer to the centre along the east-west axis), it's interesting to see where the "religious centres" are.
I'm also intrigued by the "church bodies" map. Each county is coloured by "leading church body" -- that is, the church or denomination with the most adherents in that county. If the leading church body's adherents make up more than 50% of the population, the county is marked with a dot. For several Protestant denominations (Baptists, LDS, and Lutherans), the influence appears to "spread" from central "cores" of majority adherence. This is not true of Catholicism, but of course Catholicism isn't based somewhere in the United States in the way that the LDS church is. Additionally, it's interesting that the regions with less than 35% religious adherence tend (at least to my eyeballing) to have the Catholic church as their leading church body.
I'd be very interested to see how well a map of overt agnostics and atheists correlated with the map of religious adherents.
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posted
I'm not sure I find it terribly surprising, but it is noteworthy that the counties containing Los Angeles and New York City are among the most religious in their regions.
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Edit 2: And on the religious adherents map, "Christian" has that same meaning as well ("Restoration Movement Christians"). I think "Christian" was just a poor choice of shorthand. Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Well, that's the thing, Scott -- Oregon might not be the atheist haven that the map suggests. It could simply be a Wiccan, Pagan, Satanist, Scientologist, or "Other" haven. That's why I'm curious to reverse-correlate the data with self-identified agnostics and atheists.
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posted
Fascinating. There were several groups that I though should have more representation on the "religious bodies" map, but when I clicked on the individual denomination maps they were the ones who were more spread out -- so they had fewer counties where they were the majority religion, but more adherents overall.
posted
On the "Christian" label -- the official name of one particular denomination is "The Christian Church." Since that leads to confusion in discussion, usually other labels are tacked on. Which is why you'll often see The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). "Restoration Movement Churches" includes TCC(DoC) and some others on that same branch of the family tree.
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posted
sax, I wonder if the higher "religiosity" of L.A. and N.Y.C. is due in part to immigration? Are new immigrants to the U.S. generally more religious as a population? That's certainly at least somewhat true here in Canada.
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quote:Originally posted by Farmgirl: I hadn't realized there was such a large conglomeration of Quakers up in the Idaho area....
Remember it's only proportionately large; that is, the concentration of Quakers may be high in Owyhee county, but since the overall population is only 10,460, that conglomeration may only be a couple hundred people (still more than I would have expected to find in rural Idaho).
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Catholics are about 25% of the country, Baptists are about 16%. Total Christian percentage is about 82%, so these two make up about half the Christians in the country.
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Interesting. I didn't realize there were so many Catholics. I grew up in an almost entirely Protestant part of Canada (lots of Baptists) and wasn't exposed to significant numbers of Catholics until I went to Ontario... so I guess it isn't surprising that I'm surprised.
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posted
Is that Nevada? Yes, I was surprised as well, but I didn't know which state it was. I was also surprised by the Jewish population in southern Florida.
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That Religious Adherents map was interesting. It's like a big stripe down the middle of the country.
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As I understand it, southern Florida is a popular retirement spot for rich Northeasterners, especially New Yorkers.
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Interestingly, while Catholics have by far the highest number of adherents, they're third in number of churches. They avarage around 2,400 people/church.
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I'm not surprised by the Jewish population in southern Nevada (specifically Clark County, and practically speaking Las Vegas). There are probably a number of reasons, but at least one of them is the large retiree population. We have a large cluster of Jewish retirees, kind of like the version of Florida depicted in Seinfeld.
Our mayor, Oscar Goodman, is Jewish, too. And I found an interesting website about the phenomenon. SitePosts: 202 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Thanks, Silent E! See, I never knew that was a hot retirement spot, or anything about that population. The things you learn on Hatrack!
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quote:Interestingly, while Catholics have by far the highest number of adherents, they're third in number of churches. They avarage around 2,400 people/church.
Yep. Catholics have more services per Sunday on average than the the other churches I'm familiar with. Services are about 1 to 1 1/2 hours, and there's at least one on Saturday night.
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It is interesting that MA has a wide variety of moderate to high concentrations of a wide variety of religions, and a respectable showing in the religious adherents map (more than the west coast, generally, and portions of the mid-Atlantic).
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What's up with that one county in Florida having what looks like the highest concentration of Mormons east of the Mississippi?
Why are the highest occurences of the Quakers outside of the Northeast? Why are there so many in Colorado and Northern Alaska?!?
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"I was also surprised by the Jewish population in southern Florida."
Nah, there are loads of Jews down here. What's suprising is that it looks like Miami is in the pink and not purple (I think that's where Miami is?). Go to Miami on a Saturday and you'll see what I mean; there are loads of observant Jews walking home from Temple. Or maybe it's just that Miami has more observant Jews than the Ft. Lauderdale area, but not as many total Jews.
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quote:Originally posted by twinky: sax, I wonder if the higher "religiosity" of L.A. and N.Y.C. is due in part to immigration? Are new immigrants to the U.S. generally more religious as a population? That's certainly at least somewhat true here in Canada.
Well, I believe that the majority of Hispanics are Catholic, which probably explains the large Catholic presence in the Southwest. I don't know about other immigrant groups, though.
I'd just like to add that I get a kick out of how well-defined the Jello Belt is.
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quote:Originally posted by Storm Saxon: What's up with that one county in Florida having what looks like the highest concentration of Mormons east of the Mississippi?
There used to be a large LDS Church owned cattle ranch in Florida located in a sparsely populated area. If the facility is still there, it would show as a high percentage with small actual numbers.
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quote: There used to be a large LDS Church owned cattle ranch in Florida located in a sparsely populated area. If the facility is still there, it would show as a high percentage with small actual numbers.
Interesting.
*scratches head*
Why does the LDS church own a cattle ranch out in the middle of nowhere for people to live on? Does the church do investments for members, too, or what?
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The LDS church owns a lot of ranches, farms, orchards, etc. that are mostly used by the "Welfare" (humanitarian aid) arm of the church. The ranch probably isn't there to provide a home for people, but to provide beef.
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The Church owns a lot of real estate. Some is used for ecclesiastical purposes some as "Welfare" assets and some just for investment. As I remember, the Florida property was once a part of the Welfare System. Later it was operated only as an investment. (By the way, before anyone asks, Church property not used totally for ecclesiastical purposes is on tax rolls.)
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Well, from the map, and from you're saying, Artemisia, a lot of people still live on and around the ranch. If the church is using it as a way for its poor to work and get money (at a competitive wage for their labor), I am totally down with that.
The investment bit I'm not so sure about for various reasons, but it's not my church, so whatever. Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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The LDS church's cattle ranch is in Central Florida. We used to volunteer there when we lived in Orlando many moons ago. The county with the denser mormon population is in the panhandle, so that's not it.
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Yeah, It looks like its right out side of Tallahassee. I wonder if someone just hit a wrong key stroke. I'm sure thats what happened to Esmerelda County NV. There are only about 10 residents total. I'm sure one of them must be a Mormon.
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Folks sho' do a lotta prayin' in that thar tornado alley. Ayuh.
And very interesting that the Northeast has so many Catholics. I thought it was WASPville there.
Oh, and thanks, twinky! I have looked for these kinds of maps before and had difficulty finding them! I'm bookmarking that site.
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More interesting info about the LDS cattle ranch in Florida: It is the largest beef ranch in the United States, in terms of volume, second largest in actual acreage (over 300,000 total acres.) The LDS Church bought the land for use in its Welfare system, but now it's treated as an agriculture investment, which is pretty darn profitable. Of course, it could be used for the Welfare system if the need ever arises. The primary source of income is cattle, with a few acres of citrus fruit as well; however, when I visited the ranch a few years ago, they were experimenting with freshwater shrimp in hopes to make it a viable crop as well.
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: Services are about 1 to 1 1/2 hours, . . . .
O_O
When I was a kid, I timed them, and they averaged forty minutes. As I grew up, switched churches, and even moved all over the southeast, that average held true.
I have never encountered a regular mass, non-baptism, non-Palm Sunday, that lasted anywhere near one and a half hours.
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