Mapping the Mainline: Using Historical
GIS to Study American Religion

 

The Decline of Mainline Protestantism
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The Decline of Mainline Protestantism (Draft)
by Etan Diamond, Kevin Mickey, and David J. Bodenhamer

I. Introduction

Since the colonial period, religion has been an essential element of American history and culture. By the nineteenth century, so too was the enumeration of religious adherents, although invariably the emphasis was on counts of Christian believers. The twentieth century witnessed the most systematic efforts to measure denominational strength, first by the U.S. Census of Religious Bodies (1906, 1916, 1926, and 1936) and later in the decennial census conducted since 1952 by the Glenmary Research Center. Both sources list denominational membership for each county and state of the United States and a host of data on church budgets, facilities, baptisms and confirmations, income, and the like.[1] The data are comprehensive but not complete, focusing initially on mainstream religious adherence (e.g., Christian denominations) in the U.S. Census counts and on self-reported data from a much wider pool in the Glenmary censuses. While they are must be used with caution, the various censuses are reliable for analyses of mainstream Protestant denominations; even with their limitations they remain a primary and unparalleled resource for the study of the 20th-century America religious experience.

While many scholars have mined these sources, only two works—Edwin Gaustad's Historical Atlas of American Religion [2] and William H. Newman and Peter L. Halvorson's Atlas of American Religion: The Denominational Era, 1776-1990 [3] extensively map the information they contain. The maps in both works are very useful snapshots of the changing geography of religious denominations and adherence, but they by no means answer all the questions one might ask of the data. Also, the maps are static, not dynamic; that is, they visualize the data chosen by the authors but do not allow access to the database for mapping different variables or combinations of data.

The North American Religion Atlas, a new scholarly resource developed by The Polis Center at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis as a part of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, compiles the census data and a wealth of other scholarly resources within a GIS interface that enables researchers to create their own maps - even their own atlases - of America's religious history. The use of GIS permits scholars to extend the spatial analysis of traditionally published atlases, resulting in more dynamic inquiries and potentially new perspectives on a hallmark element of American culture.

This essay uses data from the North American Religion Atlas to inform a preliminary geographical analysis of American mainline Protestantism from 1970 to 1990.[4] These decades were critical years in the history of American mainline Protestantism because they marked a steady erosion in the size and influence of these culturally central denominations. The immediate post World War II period, and especially the 1950s, witnessed a national "return to religion," as a generation of suburbanites and their baby boom children joined religious congregations in unprecedented numbers. The mainline Protestant denominations—commonly referred to as the "Seven Sisters" and collectively the most prominent and powerful religious groups in the United States—benefited from this growth, as evidenced by a sharp rise in their membership numbers.[5]

The explosion of mainline Protestant adherents actually masked another trend, one that presaged a dramatic shift toward conservative Protestantism in the decades following 1970. The post-war religious expansion included many conservative Protestant denominations, groups that opposed the social and theological liberalism of the mainline. In many cases, these conservative groups were gaining members at a far higher rate than their mainline counterparts, although their gains did not register on the national scene because of the often smaller size of those groups.

Until the 1970s, that is. In that decade, and in the one that followed, conservative Protestants emerged as an important force nationally. The publication of Dean Kelley's Why Conservative Churches are Growing, the national opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment and the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade abortion decision, and the 1976 election of "born-again" Jimmy Carter as President brought attention to this "new" subculture of evangelical, fundamentalist, and conservative Protestants.[6] Suddenly the membership gains of the previous decades were making themselves felt, as it became clear that conservative Protestantism was no longer a rural or southern phenomenon. The apparent ascendancy of conservative elements also seemed to match the decline of mainline Protestantism. Liberalism and laxness was out; conservatism and strictness were in.[7] The gains of conservative groups and the retreat of mainline denominations continued into the 1980s, with the election and re-election of President Ronald Reagan and the national rise of groups like the Moral Majority. By the end of the 1980s, it had become commonplace among scholars and informed observers to talk of the "collapse" of mainline Protestantism.

II. Statement of Questions

In examining the arguments advanced by scholars to explain the late twentieth century recent decline of mainline Protestantism, two problems become apparent immediately. The first is the tendency to describe the denominations as monolithic, which obscures the wide diversity among and within these bodies. In many cases, rural United Methodists and American Baptists were as conservative as many independent Christian churches and had little in common with their more liberal urban counterparts. Every mainline denomination, in fact, began to split apart along conservative and liberal lines, often as a result of infighting over issues such as homosexuality and women's ordination.[8]

The second problem is the absence of a geographical dimension to the mainline Protestant story. At one scale, splits within mainline denominations mirrored other cultural divisions that, in geographical terms, pitted the more liberal coasts against more conservative rural parts of the midwest and south. Moreover, the arguments about national decline blurred other local and regional variations where mainline Protestants held steady or even gained membership.

There is room, therefore, for a spatial analysis of mainline Protestantism from 1970 to 1990. This article begins this analysis in a preliminary way, with a particular focus on two questions:

  • Where in the United States was mainline Protestantism the strongest and weakest during this period?

  • What geographical differences existed among the various mainline Protestant denominations?

By answering these questions, we can strip away some of the generalizations about mainline Protestantism's decline and uncover nuances to its story.

III. Analysis

We can begin this story by examining a map showing the proportion of mainline Protestant adherents in each county in the United States in 1970 (Figure 1). The strongest areas of mainline Protestantism stretched in an arc from New York and Pennsylvania across the midwest and into upper midwest and even northwest. Conversely, the lowest proportions of mainline Protestants were found in southern United States and the intermountain west, both areas that are dominated by other religious groups (Southern Baptists in the south and Latter-day Saints in the west.) Nationally the proportion of mainline Protestants in 1970 was just under 15 percent, but the percentage in individual counties ranged from a high of 85 percent in Norman County, Minnesota, to a low of less than .1 percent in Jackson County, Tennessee. (66 counties had no data reported for them.)

Figure 1: Proportion of mainline Protestant adherents in the United States in 1970
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By 1990, the national proportion of mainline Protestants had fallen to 11 percent, which represented a numerical loss of over 2.6 million adherents. At the county level, this shift was equally dramatic. In 1970, 647 counties had fewer than 10 percent Mainline Protestants. By 1990, this total had risen to over 1000 counties. The strongest region of erosion was across the midwest and into the upper midwest and northwest (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Proportion of mainline Protestant adherents in the United States in 1990
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These changes are especially evident when mapped as the percentage change in mainline Protestants from 1970 to 1990 (Figure 3). The counties where mainline Protestants lost the most in terms of a share of religious adherents were scattered across the country, while the counties where the mainline denominations increased their share were concentrated in the upper midwest and the south. Overall, 83 percent of all counties saw declines in the proportions of mainline Protestants. The extent of these losses is seen in the fact that overall, the population in these counties rose by 44 million and the number of all adherents rose by almost 38 million, yet the number of mainline Protestants fell by 3 million people.

Figure 3: Percentage change in mainline Protestants from 1970 to 1990
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At first glance, then, the national story of mainline Protestant decline appears to have some validity at the local county level. But what about the areas of mainline Protestant strength? Are there any lessons that can be learned from them?

Between 1970 and 1990, the proportion of mainline Protestants grew in only 463 counties, most of which were in the midwest and south. Ironically, 132 of these counties experienced a decline in the numbers of mainline Protestants, but because they lost fewer adherents than other groups, their proportional share actually rose. So, in fact, only 331 counties gained mainline Protestants in numerical and proportional terms.

If we isolate those counties in which mainline Protestantism grew, we do see some important trends. Figure 4 and Figure 5 show the 100 largest mainline Protestant county populations by proportion in 1970 and 1990. In 1970, these counties had an average rate of adherence of 81 percent, far higher than the 1970 national average of 53 percent. This rate of adherence in the top 100 mainline Protestant counties rose to 85 percent in 1990, making clear that in these places of mainline Protestant strength, stories of national decline were of little relevance.

Figure 4: 100 largest mainline Protestant county populations by proportion in 1970
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Figure 5: 100 largest mainline Protestant county populations by proportion in 1990
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In both 1971 and 1990 almost all of the top 100 counties were in the midwest and upper midwest. This regional clustering raises a question as to what kinds of mainline Protestants were in these places to make them so strong? Both in 1970 and 1990, about three-quarters were Lutheran-dominated, with the other quarter Methodist. This finding helps to answer the second question posed above, concerning the variations within mainline Protestantism. If Lutherans dominated the strongest mainline Protestant counties in both 1970 and 1990, what about the rest of the nation?

By mapping the largest mainline Protestant group in each county in 1970 and 1990 (Figure 6 and Figure 7), the heavy Lutheran concentration in the upper midwest becomes immediately apparent, as does the widespread Methodist presence across the midwest and south. Both of these denominations have historical roots in the nineteenth century. In addition to the regional dominance these two groups, this map also highlights some smaller areas of mainline Protestant strength. Along the Ohio River Valley, through Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, pockets of Baptist and Disciples dominance overlays the Methodist region. The United Church of Christ (UCC) has two areas of influence, each of which relates to different historical strands within the UCC. The UCC's Congregationalist roots remain strong in New England, while the German Evangelical and Reformed roots contribute to the UCC dominance around St. Louis.

Figure 6: Largest mainline Protestant group in each county in 1970
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Figure 7: Largest mainline Protestant group in each county in 1990
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The intermountain west presents an interesting mixture of mainline Protestantism, in which no one group dominates. Rather, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, and Methodists all share the landscape. The reasons for this can be linked to the overwhelming dominance of Latter-day Saints across this region, which relegates all other groups to a minority status that forces them to compete with one another.[9] It also can likely be traced to the westward expansion in the nineteenth century in which migrating easterners and midwesterners, all carrying different religious traditions, headed west to find their fortune in gold. A century and a half later, this migratory hodge-podge remains visible in the religious landscape.

IV. Conclusion

This brief geographical excursion suggests that while national stories might be accurate, much variation existed at the local and regional level. Certain mainline Protestant groups, and Lutherans in particular, had a far different experience between 1970 and 1990 than did their six sisters denominations. The specifics of how and why this happened require further inquiry, but this initial parsing of the data makes clear that spatial analysis of cultural data can help to uncover trends not readily seen using more traditional (non-spatial) techniques.

 

Footnotes

[1] The following variables appear in one or more of the CRB and Glenmary censuses, all available at the county level: adherents by denomination by age (adults and children), gender, race; places of worship and seating capacity; expenditures and debt; Sunday Schools and other programs; church property and parsonages; clergy salaries and status (full-time, bi-vocational); immigrant communications and languages; support of missions and philanthropic institutions; numbers of religiously affiliated hospitals and patients, and schools and pupils.
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[2] Edwin S. Gaustad, Historical Atlas of Religion in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1962); Edwin Scott Gaustad and Philip L. Barlow, New Historical Atlas of Religion in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
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[3] William H. Newman and Peter L. Halvorson, Atlas of American Religion: The Denominational Era, 1776-1990 (Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2000).
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[4] Today, this mainline includes the American Baptist Convention, the Disciples of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, The Presbyterian Church of the United States of America, the United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church. Several of these denominations are products of earlier mergers. Where relevant, the adherent figures include the denominational antecedents.
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[5] For a classic statement on the state of mainline Protestantism in postwar suburban society, see Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1955). For a more recent analysis of this period, and the religious backlash of the 1960s, see James Hudnut-Beumler, Looking for God in the Suburbs: The Religion of the American Dream and Its Critics, 1945-1965 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994).
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[6] Dean M. Kelley, Why Conservative Churches are Growing: A Study in the Sociology of Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).
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[7] Randall Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Nancy Ammerman, Southern Baptists Observed: Multiple Perspectives on a Changing Denomination (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993); Christian Smith, American Evangelism: Embattled and Thriving (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
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[8] Arthur E. Farnsley, Southern Baptists Politics: Authority and Power in the Restructuring of an American Denomination (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). Also see Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith since World War II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
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[9] Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987).
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