Abstract

The religious landscape of the South has long been dominated by a small number of evangelical Protestant denominations, most particularly the Baptists and Methodists. But the region has experienced a tremendous rate of in-migration from both inside and outside the United States in recent decades. Have these in-migrants altered the South's traditional geographic patterns of religious denomination affiliation? The central purpose of this study is to examine Georgia's denominational landscape between 1970 and 1990 to determine if changes have occurred, and are likely to continue in coming decades. The study's primary focus is upon seven denominations including Southern Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Catholics, Mormons, and Pentecostals. Among its findings are that Southern Baptists and Methodists are slowly declining in their proportion of the state's population, most particularly in the state's metropolitan areas. In contrast, Catholics are rapidly increasing in the state's urban areas, and both Mormons and Pentecostals are growing very rapidly in a diverse set of rural and urban locations.

pdf