Centerfield

Wow. Actually, in Kansas we seem to have every denomination, although Catholics are the "leader," edging out the Methodists in all the population centers. My home county shows up on every single map except "reformed" and "Amish." (And the Amish are in the county next door.)

This is a good find. I will bookmark it for future reference. Thanks for posting this.

What's with all the Eastern Orthodox churches in southern Alaska? Did they come over the Bering Strait or something?

Brian, this is way too cool! I've bookmarked for future use.

One of the more amusing things...click on "Unitarian"...I don't think anyone would be surprised to see where they dominate, but what's funny is the one purple spot in the South--it's Gainesville, Florida--home to the University of Florida. Very large Unitarian population...

This is just too cool. Thanks!

What's up w/ all of the Presbyterians in Northern Alaska?

And the Quakers in Alaska? I need to study AK a little more closely...it almost looks like it was settled based on religious adherence. Kind of like the Quakers picked up and went to Central Alaska, Presyterians to the North, and Orthodox in the South. Of course, I guess it is a percentage of the population and these could be very remote areas where it's "belong to this church or you don't have anywhere to go."

One very imprtant thing to notice densitywise is that different religions/viewpoints are graphed at different density rates. Dark color blips for unitarians means something very different quantitatively for unitarians than it does for catholics or baptists.

The rates are chosen based on the range of density of each faith. This is necessary to display the relevant regional variation within the group being graphed. So the "domination" of unitarians in, say Fla, is only relative to unitarian population in other areas. Unitarians top out at 1.5% of population in their "dominant" areas. Compared to other faiths they are, as I said before, also-rans. Within the also-ran faiths, since the percent ranges that are graphed are so low, you can see darker blips that are probably attributable to a single strong community/temple/mosque/church of that faith.

Abel, many farming communities at the turn of the century sent "colonies" to Alaska to grab free land, as cheap land was scarce in their areas and their younger generations had no other real options. Farming communities were pretty religiously homogenous at the time.

Similarly, we have large Amish and Mennonite communities in my area, who came out after the Civil War when Pennsylvania and Ohio got too crowded.

Check the "Church Bodies" map and "Religious Adherents" maps, and the overall picture gets a bit more clear.

Very interesting. From a Baptist perspective the "buckle" of the bible belt isn't Tulsa but Abilene.
Note the counties with the highest Jewish percentage in Colorado and Idaho are around ski resorts.
Clearly it pays to be A Catholic politician in New York state but a Mormon governor in Mass; now that's a rarity.

It would be interesting to look at oddest religious matches (politician/electorate) in recent memory.

From a Baptist perspective the "buckle" of the bible belt isn't Tulsa but Abilene.

Yeah, but Six Flags Over Jesus is still in Tulsa. :-P

Or is that too much of an inside joke?