The Bible Belt Thesis: An Empirical Test of the Hypothesis of Clergy Overrepresentation, 1890-1930

Clarke, Clifford J.

doi:10.2307/1387429

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Many religious denominations within the United States have a high and enduring degree of spatial concentration (Newman and Halvorson 1984). The southeast is still appropriately considered “the Bible Belt,” as H. L. Mencken labeled it in 1925 (Clark 1990). That Utah has a “Mormon‐dominated culture” (Stark and Finke 2004:294) is generally accepted.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservative Churches and Fertility Innovation: A Cultural‐Ecological Approach to the Second Demographic Transition Among Nonblacks in the United States

Morrison

2009

Scientific Study of Religion

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This article investigates whether the prevalence of conservative churches, which has been associated with variation in demographic patterns in Western Europe (Lesthaeghe and Neels 2002), can explain geographic differences in family demographic patterns-specifically fertility-in the U.S. nonblack population. Lesthaeghe and Neels find that a second demographic transition (SDT)-characterized by increasing prevalence of nontraditional family and household structure-is hindered by the presence of strong conservative religious institutions. The high religiosity of the United States compared with Western Europe makes it an interesting test case for the theory. This article analyzes the relationship between nonblack fertility and rates of membership in conservative Protestant and Latter Day Saint churches (conservative churches) among nonblacks in U.S. counties and shows that conservative church membership indeed is an independent factor in geographic differences in family demographic patterns-especially with regard to the timing of parenting, but less so with regard to nonmarital childbearing.This article contributes to understanding recent increases in age of parenting and nonmarital childbearing and recent decreases in marital childbearing in the United States (Teachman, Polonko, and Scanzoni 1999). These changes were part of a larger set of transformations in family and household demographic patterns that have been collectively identified as the "second demographic transition" (SDT) (van de Kaa 1987). Several theories have emerged to account for the SDT and for spatial variation in timing and strength of the SDT in the United States (Lesthaeghe and Neidert 2006). This article tests whether a cultural-ecological perspective, the theory of ideational shift (Lesthaeghe 1998), that was developed to explain variation in Europe (Lesthaeghe and Neels 2002), may also apply to the United States. The findings-that prevalence of conservative Protestants and Latter Day Saints (CP + LDS) adherents predicts spatial variation in the level and timing of change in three fertility outcomes-suggests that cultural differences across the landscape do matter for family demographic outcomes. LITERATURE REVIEWDuring the last third of the 20th century, there were substantial changes in U.S. fertility patterns, including: (1) decrease in marital fertility; (2) increase in nonmarital fertility; and (3) increase in the age of childbearing (Teachman, Polonko, and Scanzoni 1999). These changes coincided with (4) increase in divorce; (5) increase in the age at first marriage; (6) increase Acknowledgments: This article benefited from the constructive feedback and comments from

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservative Churches and Fertility Innovation: A Cultural‐Ecological Approach to the Second Demographic Transition Among Nonblacks in the United States

Morrison

2009

Scientific Study of Religion

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“…There are two theoretical possibilities. On the one hand, some research suggests that an oversupply of clergy in an area may depress wages, such that clergy would feel more pressure to take on a second job (Chang ; Chang and Bompadre ; Clarke ). Because clergy are more concentrated in the southern “Bible Belt” of the United States, this might contribute to the lower relative wages that clergy in the South receive compared to those in other parts of the country (Schleifer and Miller ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Bivocational Clergy Becoming the New Normal? An Analysis of the Current Population Survey, 1996–2017

Perry

Schleifer

2019

Scientific Study of Religion

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Transitions in the American religious landscape including religious nonaffiliation, congregational and seminary enrollment declines, and the proliferation of megachurches have reshaped the clergy labor market and increased the precariousness of this type of work. One potential indication of this growing instability is the supposedly increasing number of bivocational clergy who depend on a second job to supplement their income. There are few reliable data, however, that can trace out national-level trends of bivocational clergy. Using the Current Population Survey, this study tests whether there has been any proportional increase in bivocational clergy and to what extent such an increase has been localized to certain groups. We find that the percentage of clergy who report having a second job has not increased since 1996. However, clergy who are female, unmarried, or working in the American northeast are increasingly likely to report working a second job. These trends suggest that clergy who receive occupational advantages-due to gender or marital status-or who live in highly religious/low costof-living regions of the country may be protected from taking on a second job whereas those clergy without these advantages increasingly must depend on additional sources of income.

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“…Tweedie stated that ''The Baptist South is a major part of this Bible Belt.' ' Clarke (1990) in his examination of southern white clergy in the Bible Belt confirmed their overrepresentation in urban areas. Silk (2005, p 265) notes that U.S. religious regions are ''pretty predicable except for what we have called the Southern Crossroads, which is more or less what American historians know as the Old Southwest: Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri.'…”

Section: Major Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…While today we may associate conservative Protestant fundamentalism with the South and Midwest, it was not until the early nineteenth century and revivalism that the South actively embraced, as did the North, the efforts of the Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians (Boles 1972;Clarke 1990;Heyrman 1997). With the increased debate over the issue of slavery in the three denominations as the century progressed, the Baptists and Methodists in the South broke away from their national organizations in the 1840s forming the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the Southern Baptist Convention.…”

Section: Major Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: With Thanks

Tobin¹,

Brinkmann²

2011

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The Bible Belt Thesis: An Empirical Test of the Hypothesis of Clergy Overrepresentation, 1890-1930

Cited by 14 publications

References 22 publications

Conservative Churches and Fertility Innovation: A Cultural‐Ecological Approach to the Second Demographic Transition Among Nonblacks in the United States

Conservative Churches and Fertility Innovation: A Cultural‐Ecological Approach to the Second Demographic Transition Among Nonblacks in the United States

Are Bivocational Clergy Becoming the New Normal? An Analysis of the Current Population Survey, 1996–2017

Introduction: With Thanks

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