The Runner-Up
Religions Of America
Linton Weeks -June 22, 2014
Glance at the map above, Second Largest Religious Tradition in Each State 2010, and you will see that Buddhism (orange), Judaism (pink) and Islam (blue) are the runner-up religions across the country.
No
surprises there. But can you believe that Hindu (dark orange) is the
No. 2 tradition in Arizona and Delaware, and that Baha'i (green) ranks
second in South Carolina?
The map — created by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies and published recently in The Washington Post — "looks very odd to me," says Hillary Kaell. She is a professor at Concordia University
in Montreal who specializes in North American Christianity. "These
numbers, although they look impressive when laid out in the map,
represent a very tiny fraction of the population in any of the states
listed."
True that. Christianity is the Number One religious tradition across the board. A 2012 Gallup poll
showed that 77 percent of Americans identify as Christians. But a
deeper look into the stories behind the map's data reveal a bit more
about a nation in flux.
Faith And Race In South Carolina
Louis E. Venters, an assistant professor of history at Francis Marion University and author of the forthcoming book Most Great Reconstruction: The Baha'i Faith and Interracial Community in Jim Crow South Carolina, makes
an observation similar to Hillary's. "To put the map in context," he
says, "let's acknowledge at the outset that it doesn't take very much to
be the second-largest religion in South Carolina. It is a solidly
Christian, and particularly Protestant, state, and all the minority
religions combined comprise only a tiny fraction of the population."
But,
Louis says, "whatever the size of the Baha'i faith in South Carolina —
relative to other minority religions — I think its history is quite
compelling and worthy of attention in itself."
From as far back
as 1910, Louis says, "the Baha'is were virtually unique in Jim Crow
South Carolina in attempting to create an interracial religious
community — for which they suffered harassment and violence."
By
the 1960s, he says, there were local Baha'i organizations in many towns
in north Georgia and South Carolina. The tradition spread. "The Louis
G. Gregory Baha'i Institute in Georgetown County, founded in 1972 and
named for the black Charleston native who first brought the religion to
South Carolina," says Louis, "became a cultural and educational hub for
the South Carolina movement. And Radio Baha'i WLGI — broadcasting from
the same site beginning in 1985 — has brought its teachings and ethos to
a large section of the state."
Louis Venters says, "The Baha'i community today is relatively
well-known in South Carolina for its long record of interracialism,
strong attention to community service and the education of children and
youth of all backgrounds, and contributions to interfaith dialogue."
He
adds: "Although the map may have come as a surprise to those who aren't
familiar with this history, to me — and I think to most Baha'is in
South Carolina — it makes pretty good sense. And if it brings to light
one of the South's oldest and most successful experiments in interracial
community-building, so much the better."
Hindus In The Desert
In Delaware and Arizona, Hindu is the runner-up religious tradition.
Drawn to Delaware "by jobs in the computer and medical fields," The Associated Press reports,
"Asian Indians have become one of Delaware's fastest-growing
communities." Thousands of Hindus gather to worship at the Hindu temple
in Hockessin, near Wilmington.
The story is somewhat the same
in Arizona. "I believe that employment in the information technology and
other technology and innovation fields is probably one of the
contributing factors to ongoing growth of the Hindu community in
Arizona," says Caleb Simmons, assistant professor of religion at the University of Arizona.
"India trains many of the world's software engineers, and many of those
engineers are finding employment in American and international
companies. Many of them are Hindus, and as they immigrate they also
import their religious traditions."
Couple that trend "with the
second and third generations of Hindu Indian Americans who had settled
here after the Asian Immigration Act of 1965," Caleb says, "and you have
an emerging population of Hindu Americans everywhere, especially large
metropolitan areas like the Phoenix area."
He adds: "This poll
might also speak to the lack of religious diversity in Arizona, since I
believe Hindus still only make up around 2 percent of the overall
population of Arizona residents."
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