PHOTO | JAMES COLEMAN

A study by the Pew Research Center found that Black Christians in the South are more devout than peers in other parts of the U.S.

Black Christians in the South are unmatched when it comes to expressing their faith compared to  their peers in other parts of the U.S., a study found.

The study of 8,660 Black Americans by the Pew Research Center found Black southerners are more likely to be part of a Black congregation where the minister and most members are of the same racial group. In fact, 65% of Black southerners worship in such a manner, compared to 60% in the Midwest, 52% in the Northeast and 38% in the West.

Black churchgoers who live in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee – known as the East South Central division according to the Census Bureau – are more likely than other Black southerners to worship at a Black church at 73% of respondents compared to 63% of their regional peers.

Protestantism, the most common faith among Black Americans, is most prevalent among Black southerners at 72%, followed by 65% of in the Midwest, 58% in the West and 54% in the Northeast. Blacks in the East South Central subregion skew more heavily Protestant than the rest of the South at 78% vs. 70%.

By comparison, the Northeast has relatively large percentages of Black Catholics and followers of non-Christian religions, such as Islam, compared with the South. For instance, 11% of Black northeasterners are Catholic, compared with 5% of Black Southerners.

“Worship habits among Black Christians in the South, where African American churches date back to the 1770s, have long differed from practices of Black Americans in other parts of the United States,” researchers Jeff Diamant and Besheer Mohamed wrote in their report.

“Contrasting styles of worship were a source of tension after the Civil War and during mass migrations of Southern Black people to Northern cities, when Black Northerners objected to expressive forms of worship that were common in the South, such as dancing in church.”

Among the findings:
• 37% of Black southerners say they attend services at least once a week, compared with 31% in the Midwest 26% in the West and 25% in the Northeast (25%). Sixty-nine percent of Black southerners say they pray daily, compared with 60% of midwesterners, 54% in the Northeast and 51% of westerners.

• Black Southerners who live in the East South Central division and West South Central – Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas – are more likely than their peers in South Atlantic states and West Virginia to pray daily. They’re also more likely to say religion is “very important” to them.

• Half of Black southerners say they believe the Bible is the literal word of God, compared with 43% in the Midwest, 35% in the northeast (35%) and 31% in the West. Black southerners on the Atlantic coast and West Virginia are less likely than peers in other parts of the region to agree.

Regional trends are also present across the U.S. Southerners (48%) are more likely than midwesterners (40%), northeasterners (34%) or westerners (35%) to say religion is very important to them. In the South, 55% of adults in the East South Central are more likely than Americans in the South Atlantic (45%) to agree.

More than half of all Southerners (52%) identify as Protestant, followed by midwesterners (48%) westerners (32%) and northeasterners (30%), who are more likely to be Catholic (29%) than adults in the Midwest (20%), West (20%) and South (18%).

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