Stability and Change on the American Religious Landscape: A Centrographic Analysis of Major U.S. Religious Groups

Abstract

Religion is a major culture trait that is imprinted unevenly across the American religious landscape. Research utilizing church membership and adherent count data has described spatial patterns of group affiliation since the 1950s and identified distinct regional patterns that have remained fairly stable over time. The population of religious adherents is a subset of the general population. High levels of population mobility in recent decades, particularly Sunbelt and Latin American in-migration, suggest the potential for shifts in geographic patterns of religious adherents. This paper uses recently released data and centrographic methods to analyze patterns of stability and change for a set of major U.S. Christian groups for 1980–2000. Quantitative analyses of enumeration counts, weighted mean centers, and standard deviational ellipses reveal different patterns of change among groups. Relative levels of change vary depending on the use of raw or normalized measures. Catholics, Mormons, and Seventh-Day Adventists were among the most dynamic groups with Southern Baptists being the most stable. Continuation of recent trends can potentially impact established culture regions and issues of regional identity and perceptions.