A_Wanderer
ONE love, blood, life
versus 2004 election county maps (Red = Republicans, Blue = Democrats)
Interesting the bits where there isn't a correlation.
It was. Several major African-American denominations, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church, were not included, and independent churches--which describes a lot of Protestant churches--were only counted if their memberships exceeded 300. Particularly in the Deep South, that could make for some very skewed results. Also Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus were way undercounted because mosques and temples don't generally maintain lists of "members," which was what the study asked for. And Jews were way overcounted because they counted all self-identified ethnic Jews, regardless of religiosity, as "religious" for the purposes of this study. Also several other Christian denominations, including some pretty large ones like the Jehovah's Witnesses, refused to participate.A_Wanderer said:the methodology could be a bit dodgy.
yolland said:
It was. Several major African-American denominations, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church, were not included, and independent churches--which describes a lot of Protestant churches--were only counted if their memberships exceeded 300. Particularly in the Deep South, that could make for some very skewed results. Also Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus were way undercounted because mosques and temples don't generally maintain lists of "members," which was what the study asked for. And Jews were way overcounted because they counted all self-identified ethnic Jews, regardless of religiosity, as "religious" for the purposes of this study. Also several other Christian denominations, including some pretty large ones like the Jehovah's Witnesses, refused to participate.
Really, you could make a map based on any of several demographic factors--minority concentrations, economic stratification, degree of urbanization, etc.--that might just as adequately (or inadequately) explain the political correlations.
U2democrat said:Whaddya know...some democrats are actually christian!
U2democrat said:Whaddya know...some democrats are actually christian!
yolland said:Depending on which organization precisely they were affiliated with, they might not have been counted either--not all "Southern Baptist" churches actually belong to THE Southern Baptist Conference, for example, and plenty of smaller "offshoot" conferences were left out. I remember choking on my coffee when I first saw this map a couple years back because I knew no way was Leflore County, MS only 35-50% religious. Not everyone was a regular churchgoer of course, but EVERYBODY made sure to get on the membership roster of some church or another, if only because that was the sole way to avoid the indignity of being laid to rest in the pathetic tiny public cemetery. Which in Delta country is quite literally the last word in utter humiliation.
A_Wanderer said:
nbcrusader said:
I noticed a similar trend in tiny Mendenhall MS. One one stretch of residential country road, we walked passed five different chuch buildings to get to the Mendenhall Ministries building.
It would be interesting to see the list of reasons for all the offshoot churches - probably many tied to small, personal differences in leadership style for these already tiny congregations.
A_Wanderer said:No the upper map puts that big blob of belivers in the middle, although the methodology could be a bit dodgy.