Religion and Black/White Residential Segregation: The Influence of Religious and Regional Context

ABSTRACT Research on religious tradition and residential segregation focuses on “open” versus “closed” civic orientations, but ignores the structural effects of religious fields as well as other relevant differences, such as Catholic immigrant parishes and the communal role of Black Protestantism in response to racial hostility in large northern cities during the Great Migration. We argue that the dominant religion in a regional religious field reinforces racial segregation in local areas. Using the county‐level 2010 and 2020 US Religion Census, we find that Catholic and mainline Protestant number of adherents is positively related to Black/White residential segregation in the North. Southern mainline Protestantism, as a minority religious actor that played a key role in the Civil Rights movement, is negatively associated with segregation. In contrast, evangelical Protestantism is positively related to segregation in the South, where it has strongly shaped Southern orientations to race, and negatively related in northern regions, especially in the Midwest.