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	Religion Choice Varies by State By Brian Bethel Abilene Reporter August 12, 2009 http://www.reporternews.com/news/2009/aug/12/religion-choice-varies-by-state/ The United States remains a bastion of Protestant faith, according to a recent Gallup Poll. But an analysis of numbers released recently shows that the states in the union differ remarkably from one another in terms of residents’ religions, something experts said mostly reflects the history of the country itself. “The earliest people who came to America, what we always call the Pilgrims and the Puritans, most of those people were non-Catholics,” said Larry McGraw, associate dean of Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon School of Theology and professor of Bible. But Spanish immigrants, who came up from Mexico, tended toward Catholicism, meaning places like Texas are not as dominated by Protestantism as some neighboring Southern states, he said. Texas is slightly more Protestant than the nation at 57.8 percent, compared with 54 percent. It also has slightly more Catholics than the national number, 26.3 percent compared with 24 percent nationally. Non-Catholic Christians are the largest religious group in the country, heavily concentrated in the South and nearby states. Catholics make up the next largest group, skewed heavily toward New England and Mid-Atlantic states. The analysis doesn’t include groups such as Muslims or other non-Christian religions due to small sample sizes. Immigration patterns, the Gallup report said, can partially explain the present dispersion. “It wasn’t until about halfway through the 17th Century, for example, that Maryland became an area more receptive to Catholics,” McGraw said. “But other than that, they weren’t all that welcome in many of the early colonial states.” Large waves of European Catholics and Jews came through ports of entry in the Middle Atlantic states in the 19th and early 20th centuries, while significant geographic concentrations of Mormons in and around Utah represents the cross-country migration of that group in the mid-1800s. The historical dispersion of people throughout the country has left a mark on the country politically, said Paul Fabrizio, a political science professor at McMurry University. For example, evangelical Protestants in the deep South stress a personal relationship with God, he said, and political thought in such areas tends to be more individualistic. Catholicism tends to have more of a view about community, especially “community sin.” So areas with higher numbers of Catholics tend to be more liberal in terms of not focusing on the individual but the collective, he said. “I don’t know if the politics leads to the religion or the religion leads to the politics,” Fabrizio said. “But there is a correlation between the two.” Bishop Michael Pfeifer, head of the Catholic Diocese of San Angelo, called Catholics in the 29 counties covered by the Diocese a “strong minority,” but he said that he anticipated “major changes” to become clearer after the 2010 Census, thanks to an influx of people from Eastern parts of the world as well as from Latin America. “We are told that the Hispanics are the fastest growing unit of people in the United States, so I would think that, as most of them are Catholics, we will see an increase in the total Catholic population,” he said. “Of course, this is a great challenge for all religious leaders in the state of Texas, as many of the Latin American, mainly Mexican, immigrants are traditionally Catholic — although this is also changing.” Some people have to bloom where they find themselves. Seymour Beitscher, a member of Abilene’s Temple Mizpah, has lived in the area of the country with the greatest Jewish population — New York state — and in West Texas, where Jews are few. Beitscher called the adjustment “intimidating.” “I think as a Jew living in Abilene I have to sometimes hold back some of my feelings,” he said, and he often sees an assumption made by some at public events that all those present are some flavor of Christian. He said he had friends of a greatly religious and national backgrounds growing up in Brooklyn. “I’ve never had that same sort of harmonious feeling here,” he said. “I’m still a stranger in Abilene.” Some strive to change those perceptions. Pfeifer said he never tries to compete with other religions, especially for numbers. Instead, he said he wanted to see a strong Catholic community that could “reach out in love, respect and dialogue with people of other Christian churches and of all religious backgrounds.”
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