Map of American Protestant denominations

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This is pretty cool, and I think especially some of our Evangelical R&P regulars might have fun with it.

New England Congregationalism really sticks out here, as do the Upper Midwest/Great Plains Lutheran belt and the traditional Pentecostal/Holiness strength on the West Coast. Methodism as the generic Protestantism of choice for middle-of-the-road Northern (and some Southern! Congrats, Dubya) non-Baptists also stands out.

You can also really tell that Episcopalianism doesn't have much of a geographic base, as such, in this country. Traditionally it was the church of choice for upper- and upper-middle-class non-"ethnics", who are all over the place even today but aren't really a majority anywhere. (Note that the Episcopalian counties that are on this map are in places like Southwestern Connecticut and the ski-resort parts of the Mountain West.)

Any other observations?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Excellent find, Battista (and excellent work, Donerail). You really get a sense of the Lutheran strength in the northern Plains, Methodist strength in parts of Appalachia, and residual Congregationalist strength in Upper New England from those maps, compared to the attenuated status of the mainline churches in the rest of the country. Sixty or seventy years ago probably most of the Northeast and Midwest outside the big cities would have been mainline in those maps.

Not that I've ever been there (unfortunately), but parts of Montana seem to have an old Midwestern vibe.

(I mean, listen to how Steve Bullock talks.)

I think the heavily-Lutheran parts of Montana have basically the same dynamic as the Dakotas, i.e. Great Plains Norwegian-bachelor-farmer types. My understanding of Montana's geography is that the mountains don't start in earnest until about the longitude of Great Falls and Bozeman, and everything east of that is more economically and culturally similar to the prairie states than to the rest of the Mountain West. In baseball terms, apparently folks route for the Twins until you get to about Billings.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Why is it sad? Mainline Protestantism's erosion is entirely its own doing.

Have to agree for the most part. The Mainline churches have made a lot of very poor decisions over the past half century, even down to relatively mundane administrative stuff.

Mainline Protestantism's woes are definitely at least partly self-inflicted but I wholly disagree with describing them as "entirely" so. My theory of the mainline decline hinges on the Great Sort; mainline Protestantism is too "establishment" to become a Blue Tribe religion (like, say, Reform or Reconstructionist Judaism) and has staked out sociopolitical Stances too liberal to become a Red Tribe religion (like, say, the Southern Baptist Convention), so there's nowhere for it to go or to be except the "disappearing center" along with Conservative and Modern Orthodox Judaism, Pauline Mass normie Catholicism, etc. I tend to think pretty well of all those "disappearing center" religions because I think the sociological point of religion in America should be social cohesion rather than sectionalist enmity-mongering, but I don't think my reluctance to completely blame them for their own troubles is entirely due to personal fondness.