Swift
Growth and Change:
The Demography of Southern Catholicism
Clifford Grammich, Glenmary Research Center
In recent decades the American Catholic Church has seen its numbers of adherents and, to a lesser extent, churches, shift from areas of traditional strength to new population centers, including those in the South. Between 1971 and 2000, the number of Catholics in the South nearly doubled, increasing faster than the total population in the region. While Southern Catholics remain a minority within their region and Church, they are much more visible in both than they once were.
To examine this growth and its implications for the South and the Church, I review four topics regarding the demography of Southern Catholicism. The first is the extent and source of its growth, including its geographic distribution within the region. The second is the number of Catholic churches in the South and the number of Catholics per church and the implications of these numbers for individual churches and their communities. The third is how Southern Catholics compare in their growth and in their other demographic characteristics with Catholics elsewhere in the nation and with non-Catholic Southerners. Fourth and finally, I discuss some of the issues the Church may need to address if it is to sustain its current growth in the South.
I reviewed data from two sources. The first of these is the decennial series on religious bodies, their congregations, and their adherents, data collected and published, most recently in Religious Congregations and Membership in the United States 2000, by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies and the Glenmary Research Center. These data are the only county-level statistics available on religious affiliation in the United States. The data are primarily self-reported. For Catholics, this means the data are primarily what the 190 Latin and Eastern dioceses reported, although the data were sometimes subject to methodological modifications. Some dioceses, for example, reported data on registered households by parish or county; these were used with other statistics to estimate the distribution of Catholic individuals. More generally, numbers on individuals as submitted by dioceses for the 2000 tabulation were checked against figures as published in The Official Catholic Directory, as estimated from vital and sacramental statistics, and as estimated from a large survey conducted by the City University of New York on religious identification. Church adherence is reported in the county of church affiliation, not the county of residence. Churches include parish churches, mission churches, and oratory churches open for public worship but housing neither a parish nor a mission.
Because the data I have reviewed so far are aggregate data, they do not provide information on characteristics of individual Catholics, including their origins or religious practices. I therefore also review data on Southern Catholics from the National Opinion Research Center General Social Surveys (NORC-GSS). Because the sampling frame for the NORC-GSS is based on Census Bureau regions, I discuss the South as defined by the Census Bureau, or that portion of the nation whose four corners comprise Delaware, Oklahoma, Texas, and Florida.
The American Catholic Church has seen a considerable shift from the Northeast and North Central states toward the South and West (Figure 1). In 1971, the West and South were home to 29 percent of American Catholics; today, more than 43 percent are in these two regions. In 1971, the South had 6.5 million Catholics; in 2000, this number had grown 89 percent to 12.3 million. By contrast, the total population of the South grew from an estimated 64.5 million in 1971 to 100.2 million in 2000, or 55 percent. The more rapid increase in Southern Catholic numbers means Southern Catholics have increased from 10.1 percent of the total population in 1971 to 12.3 percent in 2000.
The Catholic Church has not just grown faster than the total population in the South. It has also been the fastest-growing religious body in the South, gaining more adherents than any other individual body in recent years (Figure 2). For decades the three largest religious bodies in the South have been the Southern Baptist Convention, the Catholic Church, and the United Methodist Church. In 1971, the number of United Methodists in the South, 5.3 million, was fairly close to the number of Catholics in the South, while both combined did not equal the number of Southern Baptists, 12.6 million, in the region. Since then, while the number of Catholics in the region has increased 5.8 million, the number of Southern Baptists has increased only 4.5 million, and the number of United Methodists has increased just 565 thousand.
This growth has been particularly strong in the metropolitan areas of the region (Map 1). In the Dallas — Fort Worth Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA), the number of Catholics increased from 147 thousand in 1971 to 809 thousand in 2000 and now exceeds 15 percent of the total population. In the Houston CMSA, the number of Catholics increased from 307 thousand to 850 thousand and now exceeds 18 percent of the population. In the Atlanta area, Catholics increased from 60 thousand to 272 thousand; in the Charlotte area, from 16 thousand to 86 thousand; and in the Raleigh area from 13 thousand to 79 thousand. The number of Catholics also tripled in the Tampa area, from 122 thousand to 369 thousand, and nearly quintupled in the Orlando area, from 47 thousand to 217 thousand. In other words, in many areas where the Catholic community was small, it is now substantial, and in many areas where it was substantial, it is now very large.
To be sure, Catholics remain concentrated in selected areas. The population of Southern metropolitan areas is now 14.4 percent Catholic, while the population of non-metropolitan areas is only 5.6 percent Catholic, although some ethnic communities in non-metropolitan counties boast higher Catholic numbers. The eleven non-metropolitan civic parishes in Louisiana where at least ten percent of the total population has French ancestry have a total population that is 48 percent Catholic, while the eleven non-metropolitan counties scattered in six Southern states where at least five percent of the total population has Italian ancestry have a total population that is 15 percent Catholic, as do the 14 counties, eight of which are in Texas, where at least three percent of the total population has Polish ancestry.
More generally, Catholics in metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas are most prevalent in areas such as south and west Texas, the Gulf Coast, south Florida, the original Catholic colony of Maryland, and the Bardstown and Louisville area, home of the first Catholic diocese west of the Appalachians (Map 2). The four Southern states with the largest Catholic populations — Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, and Texas — are home to 76 percent of Southern Catholics but just 46 percent of all Southerners. The combined populations of these four states is 20.0 percent Catholic, while the population in the other states of the South combined is only 5.6 percent Catholic.
The result of this varying population concentration means that the South is home to both substantial Catholic mission areas and to many communities with large Catholic churches (Map 3). Between 1971 and 2000, the number of Catholic churches in the region grew from 4,200 to 4,832, a substantial rate of increase, but not nearly as fast as the total Catholic population increased. As a result, the mean number of Catholics per church increased from 1,551 to 2,543. By contrast, there are, on average, 515 Southern Baptists per church in the South, and 310 United Methodists per church.
Of the 1,424 counties in the South, 156 have no Catholic church, and another 147 have but a single church with less than 100 adherents. At the other extreme, 52 counties, and 14 metropolitan areas, have at least 5,000 Catholics per church. In 1971, only one metropolitan area, Miami, had more than 5,000 Catholics per church.
The aggregate data show where Catholic populations have increased, but offer only limited information about the sources of this growth, much less how the Southern Catholic population compares in its demographic characteristics with Catholics elsewhere in the nation or with non-Catholic Southerners. For such information I analyze NORC-GSS data for the years 1998 and 2000.
Southern Catholics are less likely to have grown up in the region, and more likely to have emigrated from foreign lands, than are non-Southern Catholics (Figure 3). While 82.1 percent of non-Catholic Southerners grew up in the South, only 57.8 percent of Southern Catholics did. While 9.2 percent of Southern Catholics grew up in foreign lands, only 2.5 percent of non-Southern Catholics did. Because the regions and lands from which Southern Catholics migrated were more Catholic than the South, migration has contributed substantially to the growth of the Southern Catholic population.
Southern Catholics are also a very diverse population in their racial and ethnic characteristics. In particular, they are more likely to be African American than other Catholics, more likely to be Hispanic than other Southerners, and more likely to be of other non-white origins (e.g., Asian) than either Catholics elsewhere or other Southerners (Figure 4). It is noteworthy that Southern Hispanics appear to be less Catholic than other Hispanics, particularly given that six of the seven Latin dioceses with the fastest rates of total Hispanic population growth — Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville, Little Rock, Raleigh, and Birmingham — are in the South. The NORC-GSS data indicate that 54 percent of Southern Hispanics are Catholic, compared to 65 percent of Hispanics elsewhere.
Southern Catholics have some characteristics that may help the Church build its institutional presence in the region. In particular, Southern Catholics have higher levels of income and education than other Catholics or other Southerners (Figure 5). Thirty six percent of Southern Catholics have annual family incomes of at least $50 thousand, while 27 percent have at least four years of college education.
Nevertheless, by some measures Southern Catholics are less attached to their Church than southerners of other faiths are attached to theirs (Figure 6). Thirty percent of Southern Catholics report going to church at least weekly, trailing the 36 percent of those deemed to be in “fundamentalist” Protestant churches (e.g., Southern Baptist Convention) doing so. At the other extreme, 46 percent of Southern Catholics report going to church less than once per month, compared to only 38 percent of fundamentalist Protestants who fail to attend at least monthly. Southern Catholic attendance at church is roughly comparable to that by those deemed to be in non-fundamentalist Protestant churches (e.g., United Methodist Church).
Another measure of detachment among Southern Catholics is the number of persons who have converted to the Church compared to those who have left it (Figure 7). Analyzing total population statistics and NORC-GSS statistics on the current religion of respondents with data on their religion at 16 years of age indicates that 1.4 million Southern adults who are now Catholic were of another religious group, whether Protestant, other, or none, at age 16, but 4 million adults now in the South who were Catholic are now members of another religious grouping.
How can we best summarize the demographic characteristics of Southern Catholicism and their likely future effects? I would emphasize four points. First, the growth of Southern Catholicism appears to have been fueled primarily by migration, as demonstrated by the large number of Southern Catholics in the region who moved from other, more Catholic regions, and as indirectly shown by the large number of persons now in the South who used to be Catholic but who have left the Church. Second, even if based on migration, it is indisputable that Catholicism has grown in the South, that it has grown faster than other religious bodies in the region, and that its numbers of churches have increased, albeit not as fast as its adherents have, meaning Southern churches are now serving far larger numbers of parishioners than they have. Third, as demonstrated by comparatively low attendance at church and by a propensity of many to leave Catholicism, many Southern Catholics may have only a tenuous relationship with the Church. Strengthening this relationship may be key to sustaining the growth Southern Catholicism has enjoyed by migration.
Fourth and finally, the “growing pains” of Southern Catholicism, or the difficulties in sustaining the growth it is enjoying from migration, may increase the diversity of Southern Catholics continues to increase. While the data are somewhat sketchy, it may be that continuing to meet the needs of new populations, whether migrants from elsewhere or a burgeoning Hispanic population growing most rapidly in areas where Hispanics traditionally have not been, may be critical to meeting this challenge.
The Conference on Southern Catholicism was made possible with a grant from Pew Charitable Trusts.
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