Title

Yolo County Christian Churches: Spatial Distribution Over Time

Author Information

Amy Zuber
American River College, Geography 350: Data Acquisition in GIS; Spring 2010
hillzuber@earthlink.net

Abstract

This project analyzes the spatial distribution of Christian Churches in Yolo County over a 20-year time span to see if there has been any significant decline. It also attempts to explain by ethnicity and population data, any spatial patterns that might exist.

Introduction

According to recent surveys, it is reported that the Christian Church has been steadily declining. CNN ran headlines proclaiming, “America is becoming less Christian, Survey finds.” The first line of the article reads, “America is less a Christian nation than it was 20 years ago.” Given this statement and many more similar to it I decided to see if I would notice this trend in my own area. This GIS project was created to see if there was a noticeable change in Christian Church distribution in Yolo County over the past 20 years. I wanted also to see if there were patterns in the distribution that might correlate with ethnic group and population concentration changes.

Background

There are many people within the Christian Church that are concerned with church locations. A foundational belief within the church is that everyone should be given the opportunity to learn about Jesus Christ, hence the desire to expand spatially. Many studies similar to this project exist; The Taiwan Protestant Church Distribution vs. Education and income levels (McFall, 2008), A Light in the Darkness- Christian Denominations (Johnstone, 2004), and America’s Unchurched Populations (GMI, 2006). There are also software packages and geographic data made specifically for people in the church to do their own research, like Ministry Area Profile by Percept, and Global Ministry Mapping System by GMI.

Methods

The first step in completing this project was to define what data I was going to need. I planned to compare Christian Churches but according to the World Christian Encyclopedia 2001, there are about 38,000 different denominations. I chose the top 6 ordered by number of people who describe themselves as belonging to that denomination (ASRI, 2001). Gathering the current information was simple. I took the current copy of the local telephone yellow pages and created an excel table that included name, address, phone number, and denomination. To find that same information for 1990 I visited the Yolo County Archives and Record Center. Once I had a table for both years, I then imported them into ArcGIS and created an address locator to geocode locations. My reference layers all came from the GIS Department for the county of Yolo. Census Data was from ESRI and I also included population data from Nielson Claritas. Yolo county has their GIS data in NAD 1983 State Plane California II, I decided that I would keep the project in this same projection since my reference layers were already projected and it is a good fit for the area with high accuracy locally.

Once all the layers were assembled, I began the process of classifying the data for analysis. I color coded the churches by denominations and for both time frames, so that one could easily see what type of church was at each location. I then took the population data and classified Yolo County using graduated colors to see where the concentrations of people were both in 1990 and 2010. After I found that West Sacramento had a large number of new Baptist Churches I decided to see if there was an ethnic group concentrated in that area that might play a part in those numbers. Unfortunately, I was limited to the ethnicity classifications that the census provided. I had read in my research that according to the ABCNEWS/Beliefnet poll, “Baptists are especially prevalent among Black Americans: Nearly half of Blacks, 48 percent, say they're Baptists, making it far and away their No. 1 denomination.” Therefore, I decided to research the number of African American people in Yolo County. I took the Census Data and did a sort on the Black field then I took the top 10% by way of tract numbers. I created a data layer of census tracts with large numbers of Black Americans.

Results

After compiling the data on Christian Churches from 1990 and 2010, I created Excel spreadsheets for importation into ArcGIS

Next I created an address locator to geocode locations

Here is a view of the 1990 geocoded locations

Here is the same shot for 2010

There are separate views for each main city of Yolo County; Davis, Woodland, and West Sacramento. You can see how West Sacramento has less variation in the types of denominations.

Population Concentrations.
1990 Population Concentrations highest between Woodland and Davis.

2010 Population Concentrations have increased on the eastern edge of county

Analysis

This Project was interesting but I believe it would be better served by adding all Christian Churches within the county. In addition, having access to the number of people that the church serves would help in the quality of the data. This project is limited to the number of churches without numbers of actual attendees. With the assumption that the number of churches will fluctuate with the number of Christians. Yet, there is the issue of church size that plays an important role. Acquiring this kind of historical data would be very time consuming and in the instances of churches that are no longer there, it may be impossible. If I were to work further on this project, I would also utilize different forms of locational data. I would research city directories, like Polk and Haines, along with the county yellow pages.

Conclusion

My project has brought me to the conclusion that Yolo County Christian Churches do not compliment the findings of declining Christianity. In most denomination groups I examined, the number of churches increased. The number of churches as a percent of the whole population in 1990 was .0202% and using projected values for population to 2013 the percentage increased slightly to .0215%. Regarding changes in spatial distribution of the churches in the West Sacramento area, this could be caused by shifts in population concentrations to that area in the past 20 years. My study of African American population concentrations in the West Sacramento area did not seem to explain the high concentration of Baptist Churches. I believe more investigation is needed to come to a clear conclusion on the cause of mainly Baptist Churches in that area. Having access to more ethnicity classifications than what the census provides would be very beneficial. The most difficult part of this project was understanding the different denominations and there being confusion as to what one denomination a church belonged to. I spent time researching online at individual church websites and other religious informative sights to find these answers. Another difficulty of this project was finding the 1990 Data of Church locations. I think this project would benefit by future addition of all churches in the area and more ethnicity classifications.

References

Johnstone, Patrick. Operation World. “A Light in the Darkness- Christian Denominations.” Projects 2004. Global Mapping International. 15 Dec 2004

Kosmin, Barry A. and Mayor, Egon. “American Religious Identification Survey”19 Dec 2001. The Graduate Center of the City University of New York

Langer, Gary. ABCNEWS.COM. "Poll: Most Americans Say They're Christian." 08 APR 2002

McFall, George. Taiwan Missionary Fellowship. “Protestant Church Distribution vs Education and income levels.” 09 May 2010.

City of West Sacramento. 2010. www.cityofwestsacramento.org

County of Yolo. 2010. www.yolocounty.org

CNN.COM/Living. “America is becoming less Christian, survey finds.” 09 Mar 2009

Glenmary Research Center “America’s Unchurched Populations.” Nashville, Tennessee.churches and Church Membership in the United States 1990. 2006.

Global Mapping International. 2010. www.gmi.org

The Nielsen Company. Available FTP: www.en-us.nielson.com