Meanwhile, Christians of color have increased as a proportion of the population, rising from 23% in 2006 to 26% in 2020. They are also collectively the largest religious group among Democrats (32%), but make up a much smaller percentage of Republicans (14%).
The survey was able to tease out granular county-level data for religious groups, drawing from a dataset of 460,000 responses that Jones said “provides the most detailed estimates of American religious affiliation since the U.S. Census Bureau last collected religious affiliation data in 1957.”
That included a list of the most religiously diverse counties in the U.S.: Brooklyn and Queens in New York took the top two spots, followed by Montgomery County, Maryland, and Navajo County, Arizona.
The least religiously diverse counties were mostly in Mississippi — namely, Noxubee and Panola counties — with Conecuh County, Alabama, rounding out the top three.
Alabama was also home to the county with the highest percentage of white evangelicals (Marion County, with 64%), with Holmes County, Mississippi, claiming the highest percentage of Black Protestants (68%). Pope County, Minnesota, was found to have the highest concentration of white mainliners (37%), and Dubuque, Iowa, claimed the same for white Catholics (45%).
Hispanic Protestants were most represented in Hidalgo County, Texas (21%), with nearby Zapata County boasting the same for Hispanic Catholics (59%). The highest concentration of other Christians — which includes multiracial Christians, Native American Christians, Black Catholics, and Christians who are Asian American or Pacific Islander — is found in Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota (44%).
Researchers reported the highest concentration of Jewish Americans in Rockland County, New York (18%), Muslim Americans in Queens County (5%), Buddhists in Hawaii’s Maui and Hawaii counties (5% each), and Hindus in Middlesex County, New Jersey (7%).
Religiously unaffiliated Americans are most concentrated in San Juan County, Washington (49%), and all of the counties with the highest concentration of Latter-day Saints were in Utah, with one exception: Madison County, Idaho (68%), which placed second in that list.
This article originally appeared here.
