Note that that figure is not presented directly in the table. What is shown and easily found is the percentage of mainliners who live in the Midwest. It is possible to compute the figure requested using the numbers in the right hand column.
I am equally baffled and even wonder if the redoubtable Dr Harmon has mis-read the table. It seems to show not percentages of denominational streams in each region, but instead how within each denomination its membership is spread across the regions, ie it is intra-denominational not inter-regional. But I am baffled by the total figure given top right of 35m. This cannot be the believing or practising total of the US population. Can anyone enlighten me? Apologies if I am being unusually dense.
Impressive number of Muslims here in the Midwest. I do have an Islamic collegue (which whom I engage in lively theological debate/mutual evangelization, neither of us “winning” thus far, though I am ahead on points). I had thought, however he was an anomaly. Perhaps not.
It is impossible to determine the percentage of the Midwest that claims to be mainline Protestant from this table. What we do know is that in a national survey of 35,556 people, 7,470 claimed to be mainline Protestant. And we know that 29% of those claiming to be mainline Protestant lived in the Midwest. Similarly 22% of all Muslims live in the Midwest. They do have a map with each state broken down by percentage [url=http://religions.pewforum.org/maps]here[/url]
It is a slightly confusing table. I think that #4 has the first part right. The table seems to list the percentage of the respondents in that row by each region. (The regions add to 100.) In the right column, I believe N means the number of respondents. So they surveyed a total of 35,556 people.
To determine the answer to Kendall’s question, I think the math is
[0.29(7,470)]
————- = .265
[0.23(35,556)]
The numerator will give us the number of mainline Protestants respondents in the Midwest (fraction times total mainliners). The denominator gives us the total number of people surveyed in the Midwest. The answer is the share of those surveyed in the Midwest who were Mainline Protestants: just over a quarter.
Thank you Brent. Once you explained that it was a survey I did the math a slightly different way and came to almost the same result. I’ll spare you the details.
The state-by-state breakdowns (gotten from the map) are a coarser and more recent version of the Valpo maps that have data by county and by individual body. Of particular relevance here would by the map of the Methodists and of course the Lutherans (Valpo also has breakouts for the three main Lutheran groups).
One must read the classification scheme carefully to note that they have made some quite questionable choices. The big one seems to be that “evangelical” really means “conservative” except when it doesn’t. For example, they classify ELCA as mainline but LCMS and WELS as evangelical; likewise they split up the Presbyterians. On one level there is probably some point to this, but it’s misleading to label as a ecclesiological difference what is really a political difference. It particularly skews the numbers in the Lutheran upper midwest, where the LCMS/WELS membership gives the impression in their numbers that there are a lot of Baptists of there who are really conservative mainliners. I also couldn’t readily find exactly which states were in each region of the country.
Perhaps the most interesting Valpo map is this one which shows the density of believers of any kind. It should first be noted that even the godless northwest has a minimum believer percentage of 35%. (I note that there is apparently a huge discrepancy between this map and the Pew data. I’d need the underlying data for the former to know why, but the Pew numbers show far less godlessness.) But the map clearly shows a believer belt just west of the Mississippi, composed of Lutherans in the North, Methodists in the middle, and Baptists and Catholics in the south.
Some of the most amusing data can be found off of this page if you start digging in the denominational numbers. Here there are some booby traps. If you look at the age numbers, for example, I think (haven’t checked to be sure though) that their population pyramid is a bit funny, so that the denomination/age table is a bit skewed. One thing that I found interesting is that they have some numbers for Anglicans other than ECUSA, though I’m not sure how much of that is Episcopalians calling themselves Anglicans to the survey folk.
re 6: What the numbers really mean (looking at the Valpo map on Muslims) is that there are spot concentrations of Muslims around Toledo, Detroit, and Chicago, but that the spot concentration around DC is bigger and the spots around SF and LA are smaller. This is a good example of why this particular presentation is unilluminating. I don’t feel like going through all the number-crunching to work out the same numbers for ECUSA, but I would guess that they are fairly similar; but what the maps show is that the east coast Muslims are concentrated in a band running along the NE corridor from DC to Portsmouth, NH (with an outlier in Fredericksburg VA); the Episcopalians, by contrast, are spread out evenly over the countryside. And if they had classed Maryland and DC as northeast rather than southern (which from a religious point of view can certainly be argued for), the Muslim numbers would shift substantially.
My thanks to C. Wingate (presumably no relation to Orde Wingate) for the illuminating comments and further connections. One of the joys of blogging is the wealth of experience and knowledge on which you can draw.
Sidney, I scrolled back to this entry rather late in the day. May I nevertheless comment on your question, which I also found myself asking? In a much-discussed article abou the death of mailine Protestantism (seethe e September issue of First Things 2008)Joseph Bottum estimated the membership of mainline Protestantism as being around 8% of the US population. (p 26, drawing on a Baylor Univ. study). Even if this seems on the low side, it offers a striking contrast with the 26% figure for the Mid-West and would seem to indicate that the MidWest with its historic Lutheran and Methodist connections is the heartland of mainline Protestantism.
Well, Terry, the answer acto this page of the study is that the mainline constitutes about 18% of the total population– closer to 20% if you move the LCMS and WELS into “mainline” from “evangelical”. Now, the Pew data is phone survey, and therefore measures affiliation, not membership. Their data gives about 3 million ECUSA-affiliated Americans, about 50% higher than the official membership number, which is actually better than the 2:1 ratio that Gallup has typically found. Push the mainline affiliation back through that 2:1 ratio, and you get close to Bottum’s 8%. Of course, if you push the other affiliations through the same factor, you get similarly embarrassing numbers.
I’m confused on what the numbers in the columns represent.
Note that that figure is not presented directly in the table. What is shown and easily found is the percentage of mainliners who live in the Midwest. It is possible to compute the figure requested using the numbers in the right hand column.
8% is my guess.
I am equally baffled and even wonder if the redoubtable Dr Harmon has mis-read the table. It seems to show not percentages of denominational streams in each region, but instead how within each denomination its membership is spread across the regions, ie it is intra-denominational not inter-regional. But I am baffled by the total figure given top right of 35m. This cannot be the believing or practising total of the US population. Can anyone enlighten me? Apologies if I am being unusually dense.
#4 – I’m having the same problem understanding the data…
Impressive number of Muslims here in the Midwest. I do have an Islamic collegue (which whom I engage in lively theological debate/mutual evangelization, neither of us “winning” thus far, though I am ahead on points). I had thought, however he was an anomaly. Perhaps not.
Got it, thank you #2.
It is impossible to determine the percentage of the Midwest that claims to be mainline Protestant from this table. What we do know is that in a national survey of 35,556 people, 7,470 claimed to be mainline Protestant. And we know that 29% of those claiming to be mainline Protestant lived in the Midwest. Similarly 22% of all Muslims live in the Midwest. They do have a map with each state broken down by percentage [url=http://religions.pewforum.org/maps]here[/url]
It is a slightly confusing table. I think that #4 has the first part right. The table seems to list the percentage of the respondents in that row by each region. (The regions add to 100.) In the right column, I believe N means the number of respondents. So they surveyed a total of 35,556 people.
To determine the answer to Kendall’s question, I think the math is
[0.29(7,470)]
————- = .265
[0.23(35,556)]
The numerator will give us the number of mainline Protestants respondents in the Midwest (fraction times total mainliners). The denominator gives us the total number of people surveyed in the Midwest. The answer is the share of those surveyed in the Midwest who were Mainline Protestants: just over a quarter.
Thank you Brent. Once you explained that it was a survey I did the math a slightly different way and came to almost the same result. I’ll spare you the details.
Brent B, I stand corrected, with a little algebra it is possible to answer Kendall’s question.
I took the data in the table and converted it to percentages of the region for each category. The data is posted (as an image) here:
[url=http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/3015/pewky5.png]pew data[/url]
What is considered “mainline” and what is considered “evangelical”?
The state-by-state breakdowns (gotten from the map) are a coarser and more recent version of the Valpo maps that have data by county and by individual body. Of particular relevance here would by the map of the Methodists and of course the Lutherans (Valpo also has breakouts for the three main Lutheran groups).
One must read the classification scheme carefully to note that they have made some quite questionable choices. The big one seems to be that “evangelical” really means “conservative” except when it doesn’t. For example, they classify ELCA as mainline but LCMS and WELS as evangelical; likewise they split up the Presbyterians. On one level there is probably some point to this, but it’s misleading to label as a ecclesiological difference what is really a political difference. It particularly skews the numbers in the Lutheran upper midwest, where the LCMS/WELS membership gives the impression in their numbers that there are a lot of Baptists of there who are really conservative mainliners. I also couldn’t readily find exactly which states were in each region of the country.
Perhaps the most interesting Valpo map is this one which shows the density of believers of any kind. It should first be noted that even the godless northwest has a minimum believer percentage of 35%. (I note that there is apparently a huge discrepancy between this map and the Pew data. I’d need the underlying data for the former to know why, but the Pew numbers show far less godlessness.) But the map clearly shows a believer belt just west of the Mississippi, composed of Lutherans in the North, Methodists in the middle, and Baptists and Catholics in the south.
Some of the most amusing data can be found off of this page if you start digging in the denominational numbers. Here there are some booby traps. If you look at the age numbers, for example, I think (haven’t checked to be sure though) that their population pyramid is a bit funny, so that the denomination/age table is a bit skewed. One thing that I found interesting is that they have some numbers for Anglicans other than ECUSA, though I’m not sure how much of that is Episcopalians calling themselves Anglicans to the survey folk.
I’m a history major. Couldn’t make heads or tails out of the data.
Is TEC included among “Unitarians and Other Liberal Faiths”?
re 6: What the numbers really mean (looking at the Valpo map on Muslims) is that there are spot concentrations of Muslims around Toledo, Detroit, and Chicago, but that the spot concentration around DC is bigger and the spots around SF and LA are smaller. This is a good example of why this particular presentation is unilluminating. I don’t feel like going through all the number-crunching to work out the same numbers for ECUSA, but I would guess that they are fairly similar; but what the maps show is that the east coast Muslims are concentrated in a band running along the NE corridor from DC to Portsmouth, NH (with an outlier in Fredericksburg VA); the Episcopalians, by contrast, are spread out evenly over the countryside. And if they had classed Maryland and DC as northeast rather than southern (which from a religious point of view can certainly be argued for), the Muslim numbers would shift substantially.
My thanks to C. Wingate (presumably no relation to Orde Wingate) for the illuminating comments and further connections. One of the joys of blogging is the wealth of experience and knowledge on which you can draw.
Was this just a fun math problem or is there some significance to this 26% statistic?
Sidney, I scrolled back to this entry rather late in the day. May I nevertheless comment on your question, which I also found myself asking? In a much-discussed article abou the death of mailine Protestantism (seethe e September issue of First Things 2008)Joseph Bottum estimated the membership of mainline Protestantism as being around 8% of the US population. (p 26, drawing on a Baylor Univ. study). Even if this seems on the low side, it offers a striking contrast with the 26% figure for the Mid-West and would seem to indicate that the MidWest with its historic Lutheran and Methodist connections is the heartland of mainline Protestantism.
Well, Terry, the answer acto this page of the study is that the mainline constitutes about 18% of the total population– closer to 20% if you move the LCMS and WELS into “mainline” from “evangelical”. Now, the Pew data is phone survey, and therefore measures affiliation, not membership. Their data gives about 3 million ECUSA-affiliated Americans, about 50% higher than the official membership number, which is actually better than the 2:1 ratio that Gallup has typically found. Push the mainline affiliation back through that 2:1 ratio, and you get close to Bottum’s 8%. Of course, if you push the other affiliations through the same factor, you get similarly embarrassing numbers.