Althouse: What is the second largest religion — after Christianity

June 5, 2014

What is the second largest religion — after Christianity — in each of the 50 states?

At the high level of abstraction where Christianity is a single religion, what do you think the second religion is in the various states? There are 5 other religions. Can you name them all? Can you picture where each of the 5 would be the second religion? Can you name the one religion that is the second religion in only one state (and name the state)? Can you name the religion that is the second religion in only 2 states (and name the 2 states, which are not at all close to each other)? What religion comes in second in the most states? One could draw a single line around this collection of 20 states: Where is this set of 20 states? What are the 2 other religions and where are they located?

Answers here.

30 comments:

The Crack Emcee said...: My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts; 6/5/14, 2:33 PM
traditionalguy said...: Roman Catholic? Just kidding.

For many years Claire Boothe Luce's Time Magazine's stories named three great religions in America as The Christian, The Jewish and The Protestant.; 6/5/14, 2:41 PM
SJ said...: Considering the number and density of Arabic-speaking and Islamic people in Dearborn, MI...

I would guess that Michigan has Islam as its second major religion.

(tangential note: I've met Middle-Eastern-looking people in the Metro Area who are Catholic. Their culture is Chaldean, and they are one of the minorities that remained Christian in the Mesopotamian area after the Caliphate was first established. Most of the Chaldeans I've met have relatives in Iraq.

And I think I've seen a "bar Thoma" church. Their history is from the Indian sub-continent, and they claim the Apostle Thomas as the originator of that branch of Christianity.); 6/5/14, 2:51 PM
exhelodrvr1 said...: Good column on the effects of race hustling

http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2014/05/31/5-ways-liberal-race-hustling-is-bad-for-america-n1845701/page/full; 6/5/14, 2:52 PM
Anonymous said...: How'd a bunch of Baha'i end up in South Carolina? Never would've guessed that one.; 6/5/14, 2:54 PM
YoungHegelian said...: Hindus come in second place in Arizona and Delaware, and there are more practitioners of the Baha’i faith in South Carolina than anyone else.

Dudes, that's just bizarre! Baha'i in the Palmetto state! Vishnu & Shiva chillin' in Arizona & Delaware!

Is this a great (and weird) country or what?; 6/5/14, 3:05 PM
Quaestor said...: Does the survey include the Nation of Islam as Islam? Most Muslims don't.; 6/5/14, 3:24 PM
jimbino said...: Well I know from experience and the embarrassed reactions of the Interior Department that there are almost no Blacks or Hispanics, but an overwhelming number of Hindus and Buddhists (~85%) in attendance at Yosemite National Park.; 6/5/14, 3:33 PM
Carter Wood said...: Looking at North Dakota,no surprise. Thanks to refugees, Islam is the second largest religion in the state in the most populated counties, Cass (Fargo), Burleigh (Bismarck) and Ward (Minot). And Grand Forks County, which lists Jewish as the second religion, has a university and several prominent Jewish families. But really, with small populations, it doesn't take much to change things. A Bahai family could move to Slope County and completely skew the demographics.; 6/5/14, 3:37 PM
Bill Crawford said...: Speaking of religion:

http://theaquilareport.com/bowe-bergdahls-former-pastor-shares-his-personal-reflections-on-the-recent-events/; 6/5/14, 3:40 PM
traditionalguy said...: If the B'hai guys now attending Methodist Churches are included, then they maybe #1. The Governor of South Carolina did that trick.

It is easy. Methodists have the best food. And they accept all people on grounds of claiming a personal spiritual encounter with Christ. How easy can you get.

Methodist practices descended from Lutherans, into the Moravians, and then into the English colonists in Georgia and South Carolina, and from them into the Pentecostals.; 6/5/14, 3:46 PM
Austin said...: Football perhaps?; 6/5/14, 4:20 PM
Mountain Maven said...: This is huge BS. Hispanic Catholics don't have much in common with Evangelicals other than a few social mores and not being athiests. Mainline protestants don't believe in anything.
They are lumping in Reform with Orthodox, Sunni/Shiite with Black Muslims. And then who knows what Buddists and Hindus believe and how serious they are? I live in deep blue and don't have a clue about the real effect of eastern religions on its adherents.; 6/5/14, 5:29 PM
n.n said...: Religion refers to a philosophy of morality. I suppose it depends on how morality is defined. The observed behavioral evidence does not support that the Christian religion is predominant. It's actually some secular cultish thing, which is primarily materialistic, denies individual dignity, and devalues human life.; 6/5/14, 5:39 PM
Ron said...: Do Muslims in Wisconsin eat B'rats? Do they in Texas declare Jeeeeeehad?; 6/5/14, 5:51 PM
Bob R said...: I'd have expected more Hindus, fewer Buddhists.; 6/5/14, 5:59 PM
Bob R said...: "Methodists have the best food."

Given that we refer to green bean casserole as "the Methodist host," I question that assertion.; 6/5/14, 6:01 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: A new survey shows the religions of people who cheat on their spouses, and according to the results, Evangelical Christians take the top spot.

…Non-belief systems like Atheism and Agnosticism fall very low on the list.; 6/5/14, 6:41 PM
Anonymous said...: Islam is ahead of Judaism in Florida? Sounds very doubtful.

Peter; 6/5/14, 7:16 PM
wildswan said...: I was not surprised that Christianity was the largest religious group in every county but one. Liberals simply disregard the lives of the majority of people in this country. The New York/Hollywood culture acts as if no one else exists. But if you look at lists such as the most popular books on Kindle or the most popular apps they always include the Bible and various Christian apps. People are just very busy when they have a religion, a family, a job and various sports and hobbies so they don't really pay attention to media and the media ignores them. There's the real dysfunction - it's huge, involving a majority of the country, people of all colors and creeds, wherever located. All of us might as well be on one of those 19C maps that showed white areas which indicated areas where everything was unknown. Occasionally a liberal goes in, goes way up the interstate, goes too far, and is carried out from Waukesha months later, feverishly babbling "the horror, the horror."; 6/5/14, 7:34 PM
Phil 314 said...: This start a fight lumping Mormons in the Christian pile.

Hindus in AZ. How many are doctors?; how many run motels?; how many work for Infosys?; 6/5/14, 7:49 PM
traditionalguy said...: @Bob R...Start at the desert table, especially the homemade cakes. And Green Bean Casserole is probably Kosher anyway...if no bacon is added.; 6/5/14, 7:51 PM
Paco Wové said...: "the embarrassed reactions of the Interior Department"

It probably wasn't embarrassment, J. I'll bet you're mistaking exasperation, as in "oh God, this lunatic is pestering us again with his weird obsession", for embarrassment.

Anyway, why do you have such a bug up your ass about the National Parks? Don't you live in some squalid third world shithole? What's it to you?

P.S. My spouse and I love our trips to the Parks. We especially like the Firefall in Yosemite, where they take thousands of dollar bills forcibly wrenched from the wallets of poor minorities, set fire to them, and pour the flaming bills over the lip of Glacier Point. Such a spectacle!; 6/5/14, 8:01 PM
Anonymous said...: jimbino: Well I know from experience and the embarrassed reactions of the Interior Department that there are almost no Blacks or Hispanics, but an overwhelming number of Hindus and Buddhists (~85%) in attendance at Yosemite National Park.

You know from personal experience? How? Mercy, they're letting non-WASPs into Yosemite these days? Jeeves, my smelling salts. I can only hope you weren't allowed in the dining room at the Ahwahnee.

I couldn't care less that blacks and "Hispanics" as a group have a disproportionate lack of interest in our beautiful national parks. I get taxed for things I ain't all that interested in supporting, too. Boo hoo. Not my problem that some people don't take advantage of the affordable vacations they provide. (Affordable, that is, for ordinary people who can "rough it" in tents or inexpensive lodging; admittedly not affordable for entitled eternally butt-hurt candy-ass assholes like yourself who think they're owed a stay at the Ahwahnee. Whatsamatta, jimbo, afraid of Yogi and Booboo?)

Hey, God forbid whites and Asians vote to put their taxes into something they enjoy. Btw, I've run into plenty of Latin American and U.S. "Hispanics" in our parks, but I guess they're the wrong kind of Hispanics, lol.; 6/5/14, 8:28 PM
The Godfather said...: There was a Mar Thoma church in Takoma Park, MD, that I used to drive past. I thought it was some phoney-baloney church founded by Marty and Thomas or something. But SJ is right. This is one of the oldest Christian denominations in the world, having been founded (according to the tradition) by one of the original 12 Apostles, "Doubting" Thomas himself, who carried the Christan message all the way to India. Say what you want about modern day Christians, our ancestors were mighty impressive.; 6/5/14, 9:29 PM
David said...: I was surprised to see that the Bah'ai were the most numerous non Christian denomination in South Carolina, so I looked into that. A man named Louis Ventner wrote a Phd. thesis on the subject in the year 2000. Here is part of the abstract for the thesis:

The religion owed much of its strength in the state to a series of campaigns from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, in which more than ten thousand people from all walks of life — from young white college students to elderly black former sharecroppers — had become Bahá'ís. However, the origins of South Carolina's robust Bahá'í movement lay not in the social upheavals of the 1960s, but in painstaking efforts to build an interracial faith community during the long decades of segregation and disfranchisement. In contrast to nearly every other religious organization in early-twentieth century South Carolina, the Bahá'ís developed an explicit policy of promoting racial integration at the local level. Facing ostracism, slander, and violence, they succeeded in attracting an astonishingly diverse membership.

Who knew that!? Probably Louis Ventner and his thesis committee, plus the 10,000 Bah'ai.

And then there is this, from the Bah'ai national website.

In rural South Carolina, African American men come together for the Black Men's Gathering at the Louis Gregory Baha’i Institute, a retreat inspired by the life of Louis Gregory, a contemporary and colleague of W.E.B. DuBois, who embraced the Baha’i Faith in 1909 and devoted the remainder of his life to championing race unity.

Louis Gregory was a black man, a child of former slaves. He had quite an amazing life, becoming a lawyer, an organizer for South Carolina NAACP and a national force in the Bah'ai religion.

It appears to me that the Bah'ai are numerous in South Carolina because of this man, and my guess is that the Bah'ai in South Carolina are predominantly black. I can't find specific data to back this up yet.; 6/5/14, 9:31 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: I too have noticed the near complete absence of blacks at the great National Parks. On the rare instances I have seen them they've been in families. Mom, Dad, a couple of gangly kids...; 6/5/14, 9:57 PM
n.n said...: Ashley Madison, a business which profits from exploiting betrayal, can be trusted. People who betray their spouses can be trusted to self-identify, because honesty is an important principle.

This is the same comedy as the 30% fraud rate needed to pitch the "success" of Obamacare.

The same comedy as Planned Parenthood or United Nations advocating for human rights while promoting the normalization of abortion/murder of several million human lives annually.

All part of some degenerate secular religion for profit (i.e. cult).; 6/5/14, 10:39 PM
Unknown said...: Refreshing that Crack has refrained from commenting how the white man's religion is being used to hold the black man down, and just throws rocks at Christianity.; 6/6/14, 8:39 AM