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Now to analyze these patterns. The South appears here as a hotspot for Evangelical Protestant populations. The fact that this pattern follows the same geographic mapping of the Cotton Belt, in which the density of African American populations is much larger than in other regions of the country, indicates the strong ties between the African Americans living in the south and their Protestant religion. Though, just as we saw when analyzing the map of the African American population, the size of these counties plays a role in determining how they appear on this map. The counties that appear the most Protestant could also be the ones that are the least populated. Likewise, the scattered counties in the Midwest with high percentages also indicate a low population.
One of the most interesting patterns that I noticed on this map was one that wasn't so obvious at first. In counties containing large cities such as Atlanta, Baton Rouge, and Dallas, the percentage of Protestants is a lot lower, even though these cities in particular are located in the midst of the Protestant swarm in the South. This speaks to these cities' (and in turn, counties') large urban populations, where the number of Protestants is significantly diluted by the large amount of the urban populations that do not identify as Protestant. Since cities are often hubs for diversity, it makes sense that the percentage of Protestants would appear to be lower.
1 comment:
I think it is likely that the reason that the more urban areas of the South are lower in Protestantism is that they have a larger transplant population from other regions within the United States. Meaning that other types of Christians, non religious, and others religious denominations occupy a larger percentage of the population and evangelical Protestantism occupies a smaller percentage of the population in those areas.
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