2020 US Religion Census

Every decade since 1970, the ASRBA has conducted a census of religious bodies in the US. The 2020 data has just been released and it is interesting to work with.

For example, different denominational families dominate different parts of the US. Consider these two maps, which show the percentage of each county belonging to "Lutheran" and "Baptist" congregations:

(NOTE: the scales on these maps are quite different. The Lutheran map's maximum value is 34%, while the Baptist map is almost twice that (66%).

Both groups have congregations in most US counties, but dominate the religious landscape in certain regions. Lutheran* congregations dominate the upper Midwest and Great Plains and have almost no adherents in much of the South. Baptist* congregations exhibit exactly the opposite pattern.

Muslims are understandably reluctant to report information about themselves, so the Census reports "Muslim Estimate" figures. Both Muslims and Jews are clustered in urban areas, especially the DC to Boston corridor.

It would be interesting to go back through the several censuses and see how these settlement patterns have shifted.

If you'd like to see the code, check out my Github Jupyter notebook. You may be able to read it here, but it's a large file and may cause your browser to choke.