Apparently, Christians are Making a Ton of Babies

Will the US become more secularized and will Christianity decline participation?

Maybe, but it’s hard to tell because Christian families keep pumping out babies left and right—way more than secular families.

It also hard to tell because the United States has different migration patterns than secularized Europe. Right now, there is a growing trend called geographical homogeneity and ideological sorting—the phenomenon where Americans migrate and sort themselves in geographical enclaves along religious, political, and various ideological lines. Many people have experienced enough financial mobility in order to move where they generally prefer to live.

Irrespective of speculation, the evidence demonstrates choice patterns among American Christians. Here’s what we know from the growing trend of geographical homogeneity.

1.) Apparently, Christians want to live near other Christians in suburbs. The Glenmary Research Center found in a longitudinal study of election data that church members are more and more concentrated in Republican counties. Bill From 1971 to 2000, church membership increased 33.8 percent in Democratic landslide counties, but church membership jumped 54.4 percent in Republican landslide counties. Moreover, from 1990 to 2000, most Democratic counties lost churchgoers and church members, while Republican counties continued to gain.

The research also demonstrated difference in migration patterns. Basically, churchgoers rarely migrated to secular counties. A secular county dweller rarely migrated to counties with a high percentage of churchgoers.

Many Christians are moving to suburbs and are continuing to vote Republican.

2.) Apparently, Christians make way more babies than secular folk. Birthrates are higher in Republican areas than in Democratic areas and, as I demonstrated in the previous section, this means that large percentages of Christians are living in suburbs. According to one study in 2006, one could find that there were nearly 45% more dogs than children in Seattle. On the other hand, in Salt Lake City, there are nearly 19% more kids than dogs.

The question I can’t help but ask is: in the future, if more Christians choose to live near each other and make more babies, could this have a sustaining affect on Christianity in the US?

Conclusion. Regardless of speculation, we can be certain that the rise of homogeneous geographical sorting will have some sort of an affect on the way people relate and think about religion in general. I encourage you to learn about your neighborhood, census tract, and county demographics to understand how this phenomenon may help or hurt your organization.