• 1980

The Southern Methodist Church was founded in 1939 by members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, who rejected that church's merger with the Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Protestant Church to form The Methodist Church in 1939.

Using data from the 1980-2010 Religious Congregations and Membership Studies, this list ranks U.S. counties on the highest total number of adherents and the highest percent of the population in the Southern Methodist Church. You can sort the list by clicking on the column headings.

Congregational "Adherents" include all full members, their children, and others who regularly attend services. "Percent" is the percentage of the total population that belongs to that denomination. Note: Adherents are sometimes residents of a county different than the location of their congregation.

[ More information on the data source ]

Complete List

^* In an effort to better match the ASARB standards for adherents, a few religious bodies changed the way their adherents were reported in 2010, including Amish groups, Friends groups, Jewish groups, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Non-denominational Christian Churches, and the United Methodist Church. This change does not affect any of the data in the newly released 2010 U.S. Religion Census: Religious Congregations & Membership Study. In fact, the data for these groups are now more comparable to that of other bodies than it was in previous decadal reports.

However, the change in methodology can distort assessments on growth or decline between 2000 and 2010 for each of these groups. County-level 2000 data using the new methodology are not readily available. ASARB staff has adjusted some 2000 county-level adherent statistics to allow for a more accurate picture on growth or decline. The revised maps and charts are now available on-line at www.usreligioncensus.org for those who are interested in these trends.

Source

2010 data were collected by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB) and include statistics for 236 religious groups, providing information on the number of their congregations and adherents within each state and county in the United States. Clifford Grammich, Kirk Hadaway, Richard Houseal, Dale E. Jones, Alexei Krindatch, Richie Stanley and Richard H. Taylor supervised the collection. These data originally appeared in 2010 U.S. Religion Census: Religious Congregations & Membership Study, published by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB). [More information on the data collection]