2010 Religion Census

[Bacon King]

Just as a reminder, this survey counts people in the county they attend religious services, not the county where they live. That explains a bit of the randomness in the first chart, especially for states with smaller counties where plenty of people cross the county line to go to church.

[Bacon King]

The percentage of adherents figures look bogus to me. Given for example that about 12%-13% or something of the population is black, then that 1.6% for Black Protestants means that only about 15% or so of the blacks are Protestants. Really?  The Catholic percentage of 38% or so also looks way high. It might be closer to 25%.  Maybe the issue is that "adherents" really means "congregants," and those who claim an affiliation, may not be members of any congregation, and far more Catholics tend to be congregants than blacks.

From the Powerpoint: "Religion Census 2010 has extensive but incomplete coverage of black protestants.  African American religious bodies have traditionally lacked resources to gather data... Data are most extensive ever aggregated for these groups on the county level, but still incomplete"

[Bacon King]

Counties with the highest population penetration of some major/notable religious groups:
Baha'i: 5.5% of Marion County, SC (and 10% of total adherents... huh?)
Catholic Church: 100% of Rolette County, ND
Islam: 29% of Emporia City, VA (?)
Mormons: 100.8% of Madison County, ID (lol)
Coptic Orthodox Church: 13.3% of Fairfax City, VA
Conservative Judaism: 7.4% of Fairfax City, VA
Orthodox Judaism: 19.3% of Rockland County, NY
Reform Judaism: 32.6% of Falls Church City, VA
Seventh Day Adventists: 11.4% of Walla Walla County, WA
Southern Baptist: 343.7% of King County, TX (lolol)

Also, some other observations:

• There are 1,400 Mormon congregations in Salt Lake County, UT.
• Pentecostal Fire-Baptized Holiness Church is kind of a badass name.
• My hometown apparently has the country's highest proportion of adherents to the Malankara Archdiocese of the Syrian Orthodox Church in North America, which I didn't even know existed. EDIT: and, googling the church's address, StreetView only shows a vacant lot- that I'm pretty sure was still vacant last time I was there. Will have to swing by there next time I'm in the area to see if there's a church there or what.