Graphic of religions in the United States

[haha]

I think this information can be very important in deciding where you might be able to stand living, for those people who get out charts of prices and taxes and such to decide where to retire. Also, it helps to have a little on the ground experience as many states are different from region to region (compare New Orleans to Shreveport or Monroe). Some Southern and border states are strongly protestant but some of the cities in these same states may have majority of Catholics among the white population.

I can easily tell where I could live (not will mind you, that decision is long made). I go somewhere, eat a few meals, meet some people, go to a Walmart. If I don't get a stomache ache or heart palpitations, I likely could live there. Also, an automatic rejection is made if any of the women are known to be snake handlers. Another cancel comes if I get turned around on a country lane and someone shows up pointing a gun at me.

I remember being so impressed staying in some little Southern town with one Indian family, usually running the motel, or, if they have been around a while, runing a big franchised lodging operation out on the interstate. Talk about adaptable!

Ha

 

[jennypenny]

If you have an hour to kill, try calling a prestigious researcher and question their research methods.

She said it was a long-standing practice that Hawaii and Alaska were excluded from studies. Most of the reasons were just of the practical sort (especially Hawaii). Pew's calling center is in Virginia and only open during certain hours. It wasn't always possible to call Hawaii at respectable times. Times and research methods have changed, however. W2R you'll be happy to know that as of 6 months ago Pew's policy changed and they now include Hawaii and Alaska on national surveys.

When she looked up the survey (found here: Religion in American Culture -- Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life) she was a little embarassed that they featured such an old survey so prominently. She said in her world a survey from 2007 isn't worth much.

HTH, jenny

 

[W2R]

Thanks, Jennypenny!! I'm glad it only took them 52 years after statehood to update their methods....

Perhaps finding the budget to cover the costs of calling Hawaii and Alaska in the days before cell phones may have played a part in their reluctance to change.

I think she SHOULD be embarrassed, not that a 2007 study drew some attention but that it was so poorly edited (see the above for my comments on their editing).

 

[ejman]

Wow, thanks for the link. I did not realize that I live in the "Unaffiliated" capital of the USA. Must be the weather.

 

[jennypenny]

There is an accepted statistical method of weighting the data in such a way that it gives you a picture of the whole US even if several states aren't represented in the sample. (There are critics of this method but it's used widely by polling firms and researchers.) There are other factors considered more important than location in opinion polling (e.g. race, gender, age, education level, income level). She works for another part of Pew that researches a different area, but the rules are generally the same.

@ejman--Do you live in one of the youngest states demographically? Those two things are often correlated.

 

[W2R]

There is an accepted statistical method of weighting the data in such a way that it gives you a picture of the whole US even if several states aren't represented in the sample. (There are critics of this method but it's used widely by polling firms and researchers.)

Yep. I am certainly one of the skeptics of the mis-application of this type of accepted statistical technique in this particular case.

But hey, they can do what they want. It doesn't have MY name on it, thank goodness. Right or wrong I'd be terribly embarrassed if it did, and even moreso if my editors just dropped the ball like that.

 

[ejman]

@ejman--Do you live in one of the youngest states demographically? Those two things are often correlated.

Dunno, I live in Oregon and I just noticed as I clicked on different states that it seems to have the highest "unaffiliated" percentage which kind of surprised me since I live in rural SW Oregon and I just assumed most folks around here are fairly religious.

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

Thanks for that. Why do a survey of 48 states?

Maybe the other 2 are too weird. Outliers.

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

Another cancel comes if I get turned around on a country lane and someone shows up pointing a gun at me.

DEFINITELY a negative indicator, Ha!

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

I remember being so impressed staying in some little Southern town with one Indian family, usually running the motel, or, if they have been around a while, runing a big franchised lodging operation out on the interstate. Talk about adaptable!

You have met the Patels, I see.

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

Dunno, I live in Oregon and I just noticed as I clicked on different states that it seems to have the highest "unaffiliated" percentage which kind of surprised me since I live in rural SW Oregon and I just assumed most folks around here are fairly religious.

Yeah. All those Rajneeshies skew the data.

 

[ejman]

Yeah. All those Rajneeshies skew the data.

Thanks for the heads up. I had to look them "Rajneeshies" up in wikepedia land and I see folks in Eastern Oregon took care of 'em. I haven't seen any of them around these here parts but I've got plenty of artillery at my place in case they do show up

 

[MichaelB]

Jennypenny, Thanks for that inside view. Not sure why they consider that old, I didn't think religious views changed that much over time.

Mr. Ha, I am surprised you give up so easily. A gun - well, that could be a turnoff. A stomach ache, definitely. But women and snakes? Now that sounds like an interesting place to live, and you are not likely to get bored.

 

[JOHNNIE36]

Wow! That's my first reaction to the posts regarding my thread. When I looked at the graphic and tooled around the states I just noticed how all the states in the northeast were mostly Catholic oriented. As you move further west that Catholic dominance drops off and I wondered why that was.

I never expected a pack of vultures picking apart the date of the poll or how many people were included and the fact it didn't include Alaska and Hawaii. I would recommend anyone taking a poll in the future contact the Early Retirement.org website to see if it is being conducted in the proper manner.

 

[Brat]

Dunno, I live in Oregon and I just noticed as I clicked on different states that it seems to have the highest "unaffiliated" percentage which kind of surprised me since I live in rural SW Oregon and I just assumed most folks around here are fairly religious.

Actually that didn't surprise me at all if you are sampling our urban areas, I was surprised that the % was lower than Washington's. In rural communities churches are social centers, strength there makes sense. Most of Oregon's residents have their roots in main-line Protestant denominations: Methodist, Lutheran and Episcopalian. The latter were state supported churches in Europe where membership was perfunctory. My husband describes Oregon's largest denomination as BlueSky, when the sky is blue we worship that which God has provided.

Oregon has had a number of religious communes over the years including groups of the 'Shaker' variety. The Rajneesh leadership was very aggressive, even if their leaders hadn't been arrested the group would have imploded as others have in the past. Their former community is now a youth camp.

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

Wow! That's my first reaction to the posts regarding my thread. When I looked at the graphic and tooled around the states I just noticed how all the states in the northeast were mostly Catholic oriented. As you move further west that Catholic dominance drops off and I wondered why that was.

I never expected a pack of vultures picking apart the date of the poll or how many people were included and the fact it didn't include Alaska and Hawaii. I would recommend anyone taking a poll in the future contact the Early Retirement.org website to see if it is being conducted in the proper manner.

A pack of hyenas if probably a better metaphor.

 

[JPatrick]

Also, an automatic rejection is made if any of the women are known to be snake handlers. !

Ha

Don't be to quick to judge the women with snakes, it may simply be an indicator that the area has a crappy cable TV provider...

 

[veremchuka]

I don't know about this. It says there are 1% Jehovah Witnesses in Texas. I think is see more of them than any other religion.

Yeah but where's the Rastafarians and Amish? Inquiring minds want to know.

Wow! That's my first reaction to the posts regarding my thread. When I looked at the graphic and tooled around the states I just noticed how all the states in the northeast were mostly Catholic oriented. As you move further west that Catholic dominance drops off and I wondered why that was.

Ethnic majorities in the northeast are mainly from Europe, the vast majority of them are Catholic countries.

 

[Brat]

I have no clue about the Rastafarians or Amish but we have a noticeable number of Mennonites in Oregon. I think the Russian Old Believers and Old Order Amish who settled around Woodburn and Mt. Angel have moved on to less 'tempting' communities.

 

[Htown Harry]

I don't think one can assume that unaffiliated = atheist. Just because you don't subscribe to a particular faith doesn't mean that you have none.

Brat is correct. Percentages from the full study, chart on page 15:

Unaffiliated 16.1

Atheist 1.6
​

Agnostic 2.4
​

Nothing in particular 12.1​

I didn't dig into the following to incite the methodology war any further, but it was interesting in that same chart that Native American religions were counted at less than .3%. This article on the all-50-states 2010 U.S. census data gives 1.7% Native Americans in the total population (including those of mixed race).
Census: Native count jumps by 27 percent

The American Indian and Alaska Native population increased by 26.7 percent in the last decade, compared to 9.7 percent for Americans as a whole.
This means Natives are now a slightly larger minority, comprising 1.7 percent of the population versus 1.5 in 2000.

Another reason not to exclude Alaska?

Perhaps, but looking over the 150 or so individual denominations and scanning through some of the text on the challenge of classifying a "baptist" into one of the aggregated categories leaves me thinking that this is the type of data set that defies firm conclusions on most any level.

Interesting, though. Thanks for posting.

 

[haha]

Brat is correct. Percentages from the full study, chart on page 15:
I didn't dig into the following to incite the methodology war any further, but it was interesting in that same chart that Native American religions were counted at less than .3%. This article on the all-50-states 2010 U.S. census data gives 1.7% Native Americans in the total population (including those of mixed race).
Census: Native count jumps by 27 percent
Another reason not to exclude Alaska?

Perhaps, but looking over the 150 or so individual denominations and scanning through some of the text on the challenge of classifying a "baptist" into one of the aggregated categories leaves me thinking that this is the type of data set that defies firm conclusions on most any level.

Interesting, though. Thanks for posting.

No way did the Native American population actually jump that much or any other amount. It's just that there are very good reasons to be counted amoung the Native American communities today. That old incentive thing doing that thing that it do.

Ha

 

[braumeister]

Yeah but where's the Rastafarians and Amish?

The Amish are on the margins, as always. I was in a cheesemaking workshop a couple of years ago with an Amish man, and we had some interesting conversations. He said that since the Amish population in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio continues to increase, the amount of available farmland at a low cost per acre is vanishingly small today. Since they mostly live by farming, the young folk are forced to go where land is still cheap.

He had recently bought property to farm in northern Maine, an area he says is highly favored these days due to being very affordable.

I'd be surprised if an Amish percentage was calculated for this survey, since it was done by phone and few Amish have phones.

As for the "no religion" group, I read recently that this is the fastest growing subgroup in most religion surveys.

 

[NYEXPAT]

Thanks for posting that, It is very interesting and a bit scary as well! If we ever do come back to the states I will surely keep this in mind.

 

[EveryLady]

There is a relatively new book by Colin Woodward entitled American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.

It would be hard for me to point to recent time better spent than the hours I put into reading it. Came away with a much better understanding of (and tolerance for) those who hold views so different than mine.

Fascinating, too, to see cultural remnants that create conflicts that exist to this day within my family. This even though almost all my ancestors originated from the British Isles and Germany with immigration dates that predated 1850, most into the 1700s and 1600s. Still, differing concepts of family, community, education, religion created differing expectations as Puritan English descendants (Woodward's Yankee culture) married Germans (Woodward's Midlanders) and Scotch-Irish (Woodward's Appalachians) spouses in the 20th century.

In American Nations, Colin Woodard leads us on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, and the rivalries and alliances between its component nations, which conform to neither state nor international boundaries. He illustrates and explains why "American" values vary sharply from one region to another. Woodard reveals how intranational differences have played a pivotal role at every point in the continent's history, from the American Revolution and the Civil War to the tumultuous sixties and the "blue county/red county" maps of recent presidential elections. American Nations is a revolutionary and revelatory take on America's myriad identities and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and are molding our future.

Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America

 

[haha]

There is a relatively new book by Colin Woodward entitled American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.

It would be hard for me to point to recent time better spent than the hours I put into reading it. Came away with a much better understanding of (and tolerance for) those who hold views so different than mine.

Fascinating, too, to see cultural remnants that create conflicts that exist to this day within my family. This even though almost all my ancestors originated from the British Isles and Germany with immigration dates that predated 1850, most into the 1700s and 1600s. Still, differing concepts of family, community, education, religion created differing expectations as Puritan English descendants (Woodward's Yankee culture) married Germans (Woodward's Midlanders) and Scotch-Irish (Woodward's Appalachians) spouses in the 20th century.



Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America

Looks very interesting. I reserved a copy at library.

Ha