2010 Religion Census

[muon2]

The decennial census of religions was released this week. The website shows the participation by county for a number of denominations. There is also a slide show report released to the press.

Adherents as a fraction of the population by county:


Largest religious group by county:

[muon2]

Thanks for putting this up Mike. This kind of stuff always fascinates me, and I have visited upon Glenmary's work before, and appreciated it.

The percentage of adherents figures look bogus to me. Given for example that about 12%-13% or something of the population is black, then that 1.6% for Black Protestants means that only about 15% or so of the blacks are Protestants. Really?  The Catholic percentage of 38% or so also looks way high. It might be closer to 25%.  Maybe the issue is that "adherents" really means "congregants," and those who claim an affiliation, may not be members of any congregation, and far more Catholics tend to be congregants than blacks. Or something.

Oh, my favorite map which I can't find anymore, was the one where the largest plurality of a religion was put up by county excluding Catholics, which reveals the underbelly of many of the underlying divides in this nation, and its history. Suddenly, upstate NY becomes a Methodist belt (the distant echoes of the Great Awakening which had its epicenter up there to start and was John Wesley driven, with so much heat that part of it broke away and fueled Mormanism), and you get to see where the Germans settled by the Lutheran belt, and some oddities in West Virginia, and a few holdout Presbyterian counties in PA (I think Altoona in whatever county it is in might be one), and so forth. I even think the Episcopalians show up in Greenwich.

This might be the one you were looking for.

[muon2]

Thanks so much Mike. Is that the updated map, or the old one I could not find?

Utah is clearly screwed up by the way.  Assuming LDS is "other," "other" should surely capture the whole state, along with much more of SE Idaho. Or maybe the LDS are viewed by Glenmary as "non adherents" to any religion.  Or maybe it is just a Protestant map. I guess that is it isn't it?  Indeed it is. It would have helped to look at the label of the chart!  

2010 Protestants, at your service.

[muon2]

Thanks so much Mike. Is that the updated map, or the old one I could not find?

Utah is clearly screwed up by the way.  Assuming LDS is "other," "other" should surely capture the whole state, along with much more of SE Idaho. Or maybe the LDS are viewed by Glenmary as "non adherents" to any religion.  Or maybe it is just a Protestant map. I guess that is it isn't it?  Indeed it is. It would have helped to look at the label of the chart!  

Indeed, if you'd look at the second map in the OP, you'd see that the LDS distribution is slightly more expansive than you thought.

This is the breakout of LDS alone.

[muon2]

Largest religious group by county:

Wow -look at all that blue.  If you took this map literally, you'd think the United States is predominately Catholic with a noticeably large Southern Baptist, Mormon, Methodist, and Evangelical Lutheran minority pockets...

It's colored by plurality which can be quite misleading. Some of those blue counties are probably less than 20% Catholic.

And to Frodo's observation, one should conclude that it is nearly evenly divided between Catholics (1259) and Southern Baptists (1222) based on the number of counties for each.