What is the least "WASP" city in the United States?

[Steely Dan]

19% of metro Chicago NHW's are evangelical?

Wow, color me surprised.

I'm guessing there's a heavy city/burb divide on that one, because I don't know a single NHW evangelical in the city.

Every white person i've ever known in 5 decades of living here has been either Catholic, Mainline, Jewish, or nothing.

Though I guess growing up going to Catholic school K-12 in the waspy/Jewish Northshore didn't really set me up to meet many evangelicals.

It's probably more of a collar county thing, like with Wheaton college out in Dupage and the whole "megachurch" phenomenon of the exurbs.

It's like a different galaxy compared to the city.

[Docere]

Not surprising to see Boston, NYC and San Francisco at the bottom of the list for evangelicals.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

19% of metro Chicago NHW's are evangelical?

Wow, color me surprised.

I'm guessing there's a heavy city/burb divide on that one, because I don't know a single NHW evangelical in the city.

In Metro Detroit, once you get out to the really hellish sprawl, there are a bunch of massive, stadium-like megachurch complexes on former farm fields. They have these obvious names like Praise "Cathedral", Triumph Church, Believers Church, etc. I could see something similar in way-out prairie Chicagoland.

[38 Geary]

What’s the difference between Mainline and Evangelical?

[Steely Dan]

^ yeah, I mentioned the whole megachurch thing. We definitely have those out in the exurbs. And I'm aware that Dupage county is home to Wheaton College, one of the kookiest evangelical universities anywhere.

But it's still extremely hard for me to reconcile my lifelong experiences of living here, where evangelicals seem about as common Sasquatches, with the data that says 1 in 5 white chicagolanders is evangelical.

Say what?????

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by homebucket

What’s the difference between Mainline and Evangelical?

Mainline = pretty sedate and normal (Reverend Lovejoy)

Evangelical = cuckoo for Christ!!! (Ned Flanders)

[Crawford]

I assume mainline include, at minimum, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, Congregational, Unitarian and a few others. Probably defined as those not fundamentalist. Not sure where Baptists would be categorized. Definitely not sure where Mormons, Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses fall. That almost seems like an "other" category.

[Docere]

You can see how they're classified here:

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/

[Crawford]

Oh, so Baptists appear to be Mainline, Mormons and JW are separate categories and Unitarians are "Other" and not even classified as Christian.

[Docere]

A lot of Protestant traditions are split between evangelicals and mainline.

For instance, Southern Baptists (which I believe is the largest Protestant denomination in the US) are evangelical, but there's a smaller northern mainline church.

Lutherans are split between Evangelical Lutherans (who are mainline) and Missouri Synod (who are evangelical).

And of course there's Black churches as well (most being Baptist).

[Steely Dan]

^ yeah, almost all the main protestant denominations have "mainline" and "evangelical" factions.

It's not an issue of methodists being one thing, and baptists being another.

I guess it all comes down to how fundie they are.

For example, the Lutheran church a block over from us proudly flies a pride flag outside its doors with a big "ALL are welcome" sign, while Missouri synod Lutherans would like to lynch gay people.

[MonkeyRonin]

While Evangelicals are most associated with the cuckoo-for-Christ fundamentalists, from what I understand - and I may be wrong here - but just about any Protestant church that doesn't adhere to one of the traditional denominations could be potentially be categorized as Evangelical. My gf for example grew up going to what she described an Evangelical church, but it sounds like it was more new age hippie church than fire-and-brimstone megachurch (granted, this was also the West Coast of Canada rather than the Bible Belt). There's a lot of random "storefront churches" that I assume are probably Evangelical as well.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by homebucket

What’s the difference between Mainline and Evangelical?

It's not perfect, but a basic sniff test is: did the Protestant sect/branch have any presence before the Great Awakening? If yes, it's Mainline. If no, it's probably Evangelical.

Mormons . . . at least the white ones, tend to be really English. They fit the WAS part, but not the P (per how WASPs define "Protestant").

[Docere]

Yup. Utah is the most "English" state I believe. Not only did the Mormons originate among Yankees from back east, but there was a lot of direct immigration to Utah from Britain as well.

https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/b/BRITISH_IMMIGRANTS.shtml

[Docere]

And look at Seattle where 27% of NHWs are evangelical. I suspect the evangelicals are heavily concentrated on the metropolitan fringe.

There's a sort of bifurcated religious profile: the religious are very religious, and there's a large unchurched population. And a rather small number of mainline Protestants in the middle. This seems common in the West.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Docere

And look at Seattle where 27% of NHWs are evangelical. I suspect the evangelicals are heavily concentrated on the metropolitan fringe.

There's a sort of bifurcated religious profile: the religious are very religious, and there's a large unchurched population. And a rather small number of mainline Protestants in the middle. This seems common in the West.

This sort of squares up with my anecdote above, and I think it makes sense as viewed through the West Coast's traditionally "anti-establishment" culture - which extends to Christians as well: they're less likely to be part an established denomination (both Catholicism and Mainline Protestantism) than those in North America's older parts. It's not so much that Western Christians are more conservative than those elsewhere as it is that they're just more likely to be part of some random church group that falls vaguely under the Evangelical umbrella. I'd imagine the median Evangelical in the PNW looks quite a bit different from their median counterpart in the Bible Belt.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Docere

There's a sort of bifurcated religious profile: the religious are very religious, and there's a large unchurched population. And a rather small number of mainline Protestants in the middle. This seems common in the West.

Along with a much lower proportion of white Catholics compared to the Northeast/Midwest. The cities out west didn't get the legions of white ethnic factory workers back in the day like the industrial powerhouses back east did.

The curious exception to this to me has always been Detroit. How did it end up with a white Catholic % only half that of Chicago's?

19% seems fairly out of step with its peers.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

This sort of squares up with my anecdote above, and I think it makes sense as viewed through the West Coast's traditionally "anti-establishment" culture - which extends to Christians as well: they're less likely to be part an established denomination (both Catholicism and Mainline Protestantism) than those in North America's older parts. It's not so much that Western Christians are more conservative than those elsewhere as it is that they're just more likely to be part of some random church group that falls vaguely under the Evangelical umbrella. I'd imagine the median Evangelical in the PNW looks quite a bit different from their median counterpart in the Bible Belt.

I don't see a major difference in the social and political views of evangelicals in Washington State compared to Minnesota or Michigan

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/rel...l-protestant/#social-and-political-views

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/rel...l-protestant/#social-and-political-views

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/rel...l-protestant/#social-and-political-views

Or even Arkansas

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/rel...l-protestant/#social-and-political-views

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Along with a much lower proportion of white Catholics compared to the Northeast/Midwest. The cities out west didn't get the legions of white ethnic factory workers back in the day that the industrial powerhouses back east did.

The curious exception to this to me has always been Detroit. How did it end up with a white Catholic % only half that of Chicago's?

19% seems fairly out of step with its peers.

Detroit grew later and received a lot of Appalachian whites and Canadians.

St. Louis comes out as quite Catholic too. I think it has a lot of German Catholics, it wasn't as big a center for Italians and Poles.

[Docere]

You can look up religion at the county level here:

https://www.prri.org/research/2020-census-of-american-religion/

Pew might be a bit low for Detroit.

White Catholic (% of total population)

Macomb 30%
Oakland 18%
Wayne 15%

DuPage 27%
Lake (IL) 18%
Cook 16%