The root of most disunity in the US, I believe, is firmly grounded in the data shown by this map. Every time I come across this, it never ceases to amaze and amuse. It presents many avenues of analysis, but any careful analysis must first recognize the shortcomings of the data visualization. A couple big ones:

• Each county shows only one color—the color of the most dominate religion. There may be 99% or .01% of the county’s population that identifies with any religion—it would display the same.
• Similarly, the less dominate religions (per county) may be much more dominate that this map would indicate. For example, peeling off the layer of most dominate (all this map shows) would reveal a huge Methodist population completely obscured by the above visualization.
• There is no indication of trend. It would be fascinating to have a slider along the bottom where you could change date of the data snapshot.

Feeding the fury is the fact that most of these churches (including my own childhood religion which is only a footnote on this map) steadfastly maintain they are “the only true church” with all others being “lost souls.”

The scary question in my mind, as a US citizen, is what the future holds: will the steady global trend away from religious faith find exception in the Land of the Free? Will the ultimate path of our puritanical roots lead inexorably toward Middle-East style religious extremism? Hopefully, the next administration in the White House will loosen the rocker on this pressure cooker.

Filed under: Only in the USA, Religion