The Decline of Faithland

The Midwest in the 2020 Religion Census

Five years ago I wrote one of my favorite blog posts at The Anxious Bench. I called it “Faithland,” after a heat map circulating on social media that showed levels of religious adherence around the United States.

In addition to predictable hot spots like the Deep South and Utah, I was surprised to realize that there was a “Midwestern Ridge” of forty-nine counties in North Dakota, South Dakota, and within 100 miles of those states where at least 85% of the population counted as adherents to a specific religion.

“Counted,” I should clarify, in the 2010 Religion Census. A decennial project undertaken since 1990 by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, that census counts as adherents “people affiliated with a congregation,” including “children, members, and attendees who are not members.” You can play with its data both at the census site itself and at the Association of Religion Data Archives.

Inevitably, there are problems with any attempt to quantify religion. As I pointed out five years ago, the 2010 census clearly double-counted some people, since ten of the counties I focused on reported an adherence rate over 100%. And adherence is not the same as attendance, or belief, or other measures of religiosity.

But one way or another, that “Midwestern Ridge” was clearly one of the most highly religious parts of the country, albeit a region that doesn’t get the same level of scholarly attention as, say, New England, the South, or (more recently) California.

Late last year, the 2020 Religion Census was finally released. So this week I took some time to revisit my “Faithland” theme, checking to see what was changed and unchanged about religion in and near the Dakotas.

The main story is the one you could probably predict: religious adherence is in decline, even where it remains generally strong. Twenty-five of the 49 counties dropped below the 85% threshold, with the average adherence rate for the entire falling from 96% to 74%.