Map of American Protestant denominations

[DC Al Fine]

But seriously, what's up with all the Southern Baptists in Northern California?

In no particular order

a) I'm pretty sure a lot of Okies wound up in California

b) There's a decent number of Hispanic Southern Baptists

c) The name "Southern Baptist Convention" is dated and probably a bit of a misnomer at this point. The SBC is all over the place now. Heck, there used to be a sizeable denomination called the "Canadian Southern Baptist Conference", before they (mercifully) changed their name.

[DC Al Fine]

Nathan, do you have a breakdown of the "Other"  counties? I can pick out the CRCNA/RCA in Dutch areas and the National Baptist Convention in areas with a large black population, but the rest of Others are a mystery to me.

[DC Al Fine]

I looked it up in ARDA. The largest Protestant group in Cook County is the National Baptist Convention. I.e. An historically black denomination as you guys suspected.

[DC Al Fine]

^ Extremely* sad.

EDIT: I grew up Missouri Synod Lutheran (before we switched to ELCA after moving to another city), and I am always surprised to see it counted as "Evangelical."  Yes, it's more conservative, but I don't think that should be the main distinction, as a MS Lutheran's church experience is going to be fundamentally Mainline, and they would certainly feel more at home in a ELCA service than a Southern Baptist one.  In general, I am not a fan of taking conservative Mainline denominations and categorizing them as "Evangelical," and if you don't (i.e., count them as Mainline instead), that map would actually likely change quite a bit in the Midwest.  (In other words, cross-matching that map with a map of Missouri Synod Lutheran frequency matches some of the "Evangelical" counties in the Midwest pretty well.)

There was a thread years ago, where we came up with a four way division modelled on the political compass. The axes were religous modernism/traditionalism and worship modernism/traditionalism (with some high/low churchmanship mixed in). So you wind up with:

Mainline: ELCA, PCUSA etc
Evangelical: Southern Baptist, Assemblies of God etc.
Confessional: PCA, LCMS etc
: BRTD

Never could arrive at a consensus on what to call the low church progressives

[DC Al Fine]

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.

[DC Al Fine]

I'm aware of hypothesis that much religious decline in the West is due to the religious centre failing to hold. I'm quite sympathetic to it with regards to post-Vatican II Catholicism. The problem with applying it to Mainline Protestantism, is that to Evangelical and especially Confessional Protestant eyes, it seems like the Mainline made a great deal of effort to abandon said centre.

E.g. A former pastor in my parish joined the PCA after being censured for withholding communion from someone who denied the resurrection in his Mainline parish. Or similary Princeton Seminary "cancelled" Tim Keller, despite Rev. Keller's strong concern for social justice, caring for the poor, lack of political activism etc.

That sort of incident makes it very difficult for me to characterize the Mainlines as "religious centre" as opposed to conciously shifting to the "religious left".