The Bible Belt - 2005

My friend and fellow elder Richard Ridgway just sent me these fascinating stats from George Barna (For the full report visit George Barna's website at www.barna.org or go directly to
< http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdateNarrow&BarnaUpdateID=196 >.

Richard culled the following highlights:

"the market with the highest percentage of evangelicals is Little Rock, Arkansas, where better than one out of every five adults (22%) met the survey criteria...."

"...metropolitan area [with} the greatest number of evangelical adults [is] Los Angeles."

"the area with the greatest number of evangelicals is California...nearly two million..."

"The state with the highest percentage of adults who are evangelical is Alabama (at 13%, nearly double the national average)."

"...the market with the largest percentage of its adults classified as born again – by a large margin – is Jackson, Mississippi, where 83% of adults meet the criteria."

"There are ten markets in which at least six out of every ten adults are born again – and each of them is located in the South."

"One of the measures developed by George Barna for the Faith By Market report estimates how Christian-oriented a market’s population is, based upon a combination of faith factors. The top market was Jackson, Mississippi, whose indexed score was 46% higher than the national norm. Close behind were Little Rock and Birmingham. Barna noted that in relation to this composite rating, the 16 highest-rated markets were all located in the South."

"...the state whose population generated the highest Christian-orientation score was Alabama."