oregon question mark

What's the second largest religion in Oregon? Well, the answer is kind of complicated.

(Melissa Binder/The Oregonian)

Earlier this week, online magazine Mental Floss mapped the second largest religion in each state, slapping "MORMON" onto Oregon and almost every other western territory.

(California was the western exception, by the way, with "JEWISH" label.)

Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses and Buddhists also claimed silver medals in the site's analysis.

We can't publish the map here because it's copyrighted. So if you haven't already, please go take a look before you continue reading, because we're about to dig into some serious flaws.

Here's the link again.

Mental Floss drew from solid data, starting with the Pew Research Center and the Public Religion Research Institute, then turning to church membership or other sources to clarify when there appeared to be a tie.

But the map has a few problems. The site, which claims to "illuminate the hidden sides of topics you thought you already knew all about," fails to illuminate the nuances of religious identification, question whether people who don't identify with a traditional religious institution ought to be considered or even be statistically accurate.

The purpose of this post isn't to criticize someone else's work. The end goal is education. Let's use this map as a starting point for a more nuanced conversation about how we define religion and report on faith with accuracy.

Promise: At the end, we do come back to the question in the headline.

Problem #1: By naming the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Jehovah's Witnesses as the second largest religion in any given state, this map confuses the difference between a religion and a tradition and effectually outcasts both groups from Christianity.

Christianity, Islam and Judaism are religions. Within each of those are distinct traditions. Christianity, for example, includes the Roman Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church and the Southern Baptist Convention -- and, to many believers' dismay, thousands of other distinct denominations.

Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses also identify as Christian traditions. The Pew Research Center puts them under the Christian umbrella. It's worth noting that some Christians take issue with this, particularly regarding Mormons. This raises a tough question: Who gets to decide who's in and who's out? Keep in mind that this tension exists.

In walks Mental Floss, attempting to educate their readers about the second largest religion in each state. They explain that their process was to remove Protestants and Catholics from the data, then map out whoever was on top. But Protestantism and Catholicism are traditions within a larger religion. They are removing the two largest traditions from the playing field, not the largest religion.

So, when Mental Floss labels "Mormon" or "Jehovah's Witness" as the second largest religion in a state, they are, perhaps inadvertently, ruling that Mormons and Witnesses are excluded from Christianity. Neither group is likely to be happy about that.

Problem #2: What about the nones, atheists and agnostics?

Mental Floss excluded people who don't identify with one specific religion. That's fine if the goal is to focus on people who consider themselves religious, but they should have addressed that in explaining their methodology.

In most states, there are a lot more people who identify as "nothing in particular" than people who identify as Mormon, Jewish, Muslim or Jehovah's Witness. Generally, there's a few more atheists or agnostics, too.

This raises questions: Should nonbelievers be considered a religious group? Is there better language that would either include nonbelievers or clearly communicate that nonbelievers are not relevant to the subject at hand?

Problem #3: "Muslim" is not a religion. (Same for "Jewish" and "Buddhist.")

This problem is not as serious, but it's annoying.

A Muslim is a follower of Islam. The word means "one who submits to Allah." Jewish and Buddhist are descriptors of people who follow Judaism or Buddhism. A Mormon is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (And, by the way, they hate it when you say "Mormon Church.")

The map is titled "The Second Largest Religion in Each State," not "The Second Largest Religious Group in Each State."

See the discrepancy here? It's semantics, but the media should talk about people and religions with as much respect and accuracy as possible.

Problem #4 (the biggest problem): The margin of error matters -- and appears to have been ignored.

Mormons could be the largest faith tradition in Oregon after Catholics and Protestants, but so could Jews or Muslims or Buddhists.

Let's focus on Oregon to explore the margin of error, which essentially measures how far off a pollster might be. The Pew Research Center's sample size in Oregon was 419 people. According to their own chart on this issue, that means the margin of error is plus or minus 6 percentage points. That means if their study says 4 percent of Oregonians are Mormon, it's possible that 0 percent or 10 percent of Oregonians are Mormon.

In most states, the difference between minority faith traditions is just one or two percentage points, which is well within the margin of error. That means you can't say with confidence which group is larger. An accurate map of the second largest religion in each state would just be 50 question marks.

For those of you who scrolled down just to get the answer: What's the second largest religion in Oregon?

Excluding all Christian traditions from the equation, the "nones" are the largest group. That includes atheists, agnostics and people who identify as "nothing in particular." If you want to exclude these folks and only look at traditional religion, it's impossible to tell. It could be Islam or Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism, because they're all within the margin of error in available surveys. Sorry for the letdown.

-- Melissa Binder

mbinder@oregonian.com

503-294-7656

@binderpdx