Murray State University

The Effects of Religiosity and Blue Laws.

Dry, Moist, Wet Counties

Tyler Collins

12/13/2012

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This paper evaluates the relationship between religiosity and alcohol legality by county.

We find dry counties (counties that prohibit the sale of alcohol) mainly in the south and it is

expected that religion plays a role in this, specifically by denominations that have restricting

views on alcohol use.  This paper examines prior research on the relationship between

denominations and alcohol use, church attendance and voting, blue laws, and race and alcohol

consumption. In addition to this, is my research comparing the dry, moist (liquor by the drink,

and wet counties throughout the south and the percentage of adherents to the various

denominations to see if counties with a higher number of adherents to certain denominations

affects the allowed sales of alcohol in the county.

When looking at Christianity we see many different opinions about how alcohol should

be consumed if any. (Bock, Cochran, Beeghley. 1987, Pg. 99) “Churches prohibiting alcohol use

have a higher rate of abstaining, and religiosity is a better predictor of abstention for

Conservative Protestants than for other religions.” Considering the more North you go in

America it is predominantly Catholic, there is also the “Bible Belt” which is predominantly

Baptist. As expected there are many more dry counties in the south than there are in the North

which are virtually all wet. The only other states that has larger concentrations of dry counties

that are not in the North would be the Western state of Utah which has a high numbers of

Mormons, whose religion has proscriptions on alcohol consumption.

We can see this in “Reference Group Theory”. (Cochran, Beeghley, Bock. 1988. Pg. 270)

“Persons associated with denominations (such as Baptist and Protestant sects) proscribing

alcohol consumption display the lowest probability of use. Those affiliated with a denomination

(such as Methodist) taking a moderate stand regarding alcohol consumption reveal a somewhat

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higher probability of use. Finally, those affiliated with denominations (such as Episcopalians,

Presbyterians, Jews, and Catholics) permitting alcohol consumption show the highest probability

of use.”

In regards to misuse (Cochran, Beeghley, Bock, 1988. Pg. 272)“people affiliated with

different denominations will display different patterns of both use and perceived misuse. For

example, Baptist probably define consumption as misuse “sooner” than do Catholics. That is,

Baptist may display a strict definition of what constitutes misuse. In contrast, Catholics may hold

a flexible definition such that one can drink a lot more before being defined as misusing

alcohol.” While this is clearly to be expecting it is interesting that while Baptist may have the

lowest rate of use, out of the Baptist who do use alcohol they have the highest rate of misuse.

(Bock, Cochran, Beeghley, 1987. Pg. 100) “Religious groups permitting alcohol use have higher

rates of use but lower rates of misuse than those with prohibitionist norms.”

One explanation of this is that (Bock, Cochran, Beeghley, 1987. Pg. 100) “pathology” in

the form of alcohol misuse illustrates the anomie experienced by those who have violated

proscriptive norms and, hence, have no guides for behavior.” An example of this would be that a

Catholic person grew up in a house of Catholics and they observed their parents drink a glass of

wine with ever meal, possibly two and not drink anymore. Since the parents practiced

moderation the future consumer of alcoholic beverages learned how to drink moderately. In

regards to the Baptist who grew up in a family that didn’t drink but remained in the Baptist faith

after his was of age and began drinking, he was more at risk than the Catholic of misuse because

the Baptist has not been taught how to drink moderately.

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In understanding how alcohol is viewed among different denominations we can now

observe how Church attendance and Voting are connected. This is vital in understanding why

some communities vote dry, moist, or wet. (Gerber, Grumber, Hungerman, 2008. Pg. 16)

“Among the most important findings from a generation of research are the strong positive

associations between individual voter turnout and education, union membership, and Church

attendance.”

This is what is called the (Gerber, Grumber, Hungerman, 2008. Pg. 17) “social capital”

which shows that those who are active in their communities are more likely to have “high levels

of political and economic performance.” But repeal in Blue laws seem to show that alcohol can

lead to less community involvement. (Gerber, Grumber, Hungerman, 2008. Pg. 17) “The turnout

effects are largest in terms of voting for Democratic candidates. The point estimates that the net

effect the Blue Law repeal is to reduce the democratic share of the presidential vote by

approximately one and a half percentage points.”

This means that the people who stop going to Church tend to vote democratic which.

Because Attending church has a positive relationship with voting, the decrease in voting activity

effects democrats. These implications could turn a bordering republican county into a solid

republican county. This is somewhat humorous because Protestants are more likely to vote

Republican yet many are against the sale of alcohol which would solidify their area to be more

likely to vote for politicians who would support their broader views.

As opinions on alcohol gradually change on alcohol consumption or possibly as more

people from denominations that have a positive outlook on alcohol such as Catholics migrate to

predominately majority Baptist areas, bickering with the other side is met with compromise. This

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is seen through bluelaws. (Ornstein and Dominique M. Hanssens. 1985. Pg. 211) “Advertising

proposed legislation to ban advertising in 1983, and a variety of public interest groups called on

the Federal Trade Commission to restrict the advertising of alcoholic beverages.”

(Ornstein and Dominique M. Hanssens. 1985. Pg. 211) “A ban on price advertising raises

the mean and variance of price by increasing search cost, and these results in lower

consumption.” This means that places that sell alcohol cannot publicly have price wars in the

same manner as gas stations can compete with gas prices. This results in people spending more

money in search and paying for more expensive alcohol which means they do not buy as much

and inherently do not drink as much.

While it is clear that advertising legislation effects the price of beer it has not control to

distilled spirit consumption. (Ornsteing and Dominique M. Hanssens. 1985. Pg. 210) “Control

laws are either unrelated to distilled spirits consumption, as in the case of minimum legal age and

Sunday sales, or are related but with very low elasticity, as in the cases of resale price

maintenance and print and billboard price advertising. This suggests, not too surprisingly, that

control laws affecting price have the greatest impact on consumption.” It seems like people make

more off of beer sales than they do liquor sales, so advertising for liquor is not always worth the

cost because the profit margin is smaller than that of its other fermented counterparts such as

wine and beer.

While these affect the consumption of alcohol it pales in comparison to the (Ornsteing

and Dominique M. Hanssens. 1985. Pg. 211) “socio demographic and economic variables that

affect consumer’s overall attitudes toward drinking.” For example, higher urbanization and

increased tourist activity were found to be strongly associated with higher alcohol consumption.”

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These is a classic example of how money talks, when there are more people from outside your

community coming as tourist those who are religiously opposed to alcohol are more likely to still

abstain but exploit outside money for profit in their community.

While there are factors like tourism that influence county policy from an outside source

there are also minorities within the county who influence alcohol sales and that is determined by

race. One observation is how religion and race are connected. (Ford and Charles Kadushin.

2002. Pg. 273) “Integrative dimension of religion is more important in understanding risk for

alcohol dependency for blacks, the effect is limited to the measure of weekly important in

understanding risk for alcohol dependency for blacks, the effect is limited to the measure of

weekly attendance.” It appears that blacks will stop being active in society and have a higher rate

of misuse of alcohol compared to whites if they do not attend church at least once a week. This

may translate into racial views on alcohol to promote a dry position in a county that may tend to

have greater rates of their population being prejudice against blacks as a way of “controlling

social outcomes”.

Data Analysis:

States that were sampled in this regression were Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana,

Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Texas. Each county was

put in Alphabetical order and compared the number of Evangelical Protestants, Black

Protestants, Mainline Protestants, Orthodox, Catholic, Other, and Unclaimed to if the county was

Dry, Wet, or Moist. There were a total number of 953 counties that were included in the data.

When setting up this experiment my criteria for Dry, Wet, or Moist was as followed. A

dry county is a county where no alcohol can be bought in the County with the exception, of a

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winery only county. I make this exception because wine is viewed differently by many as other

alcohols because it tends to be more expensive to drink and has higher class connotations. A

single winery in a small farming town is unlikely to influence alcohol consumption. Moist

County is defines as a county or a single precinct or city within the county has liquor by the

drink. A county is also counted as wet if there is a single city or precinct that has a liquor store.

Understanding the results of members of adherents to the religious data is also an

important criteria when looking at this regression. All data came from the 2010 U.S. Religious

Census, (ARDA. 2010) “All members, including full members, their children and the estimated

number of other participants who are not considered members; for example, the “baptized,”

“those not confirmed,” “those not eligible for Communion,” “those regularly attending services,”

and the like. Of the 236 reporting groups, 49 reported members and adherents; 37 reported

adherents only; 63 reported members only; four suggested a method for estimating adherents

without reporting members; and 83 reported only congregation locations. Of the 63 that reported

members only, four suggested their own adherent estimating processes, which we used to

calculate adherents for them. For those 59 groups that reported members but did not report

adherents nor suggest a method for computing them, we estimated total adherents for each

county by dividing membership by the population at least 14 years of age and then applied this

percentage to the Census 2010 100-percent count for the county.” These criteria for collecting

the data for number of religious adherents can complicate what is happening in the data.

Especially because children are included in adherents and have not effect on the outcome of dry,

moist, or wet elections because of their ineligibility to vote.

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Also, “In some counties, adherent totals exceed the population as counted by the U.S.

Census. Possible explanations include U.S. Census undercount, church membership overcount,

and individuals’ county of residence differing from county of church membership.” Furthermore,

it is important to know how Evangelical Protestant, Mainline Protestant, Black Protestant were

defined in the Census. Evangelical Protestant is the widest spreading group of the denominations

measured including (ARDA. 2010) “146” different types. In certain scenarios this includes

certain Methodist and Presbyterian Churches that are counted as different from Mainline

Protestant. It also includes Amish which is a religious sect of non-political believers and thus

have no effect on determining a dry, moist, or wet county.

(ARDA. 2010) “Historically, the Black Church has been composed of seven major

denominations: the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion

Church, the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, the Church of God in Christ, the National

Baptist Convention of America, the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., and the Progressive

National Baptist Convention, Inc..” Notice that this does not include African Americans that

belong to a church that is traditionally white. So a black protestant who attends an Episcopal

church that is not a “black church” is not counted as a black protestant.

(ARDA. 2010)“Mainline Protestantism is a branch of Protestantism encompassing what

are considered theologically liberal and moderate denominations, such as the Presbyterian

Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, The Reformed Church in America, the Episcopal

Church, the United Church of Christ, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.” Notice

that the Episcopal Church is also included in Mainline Protestant despite them being considered

Anglican.

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Table 1

R2=0.196353372

Coefficient P-Value

Evangelical Protestants -1.312741189 2.21E-17

Black Protestants 4.097330642 4.9E-16

Catholics 0.545980165 0.007062

Other 4.248089264 0.008161

Significance=3.98149E-41

Interpretation of Results:

My data explains that religion has about a 20% effect on why a county goes Dry, Wet, or

Moist. Not all denominations were significant but Evangelical Protestants, Black Protestants, and

Catholics were all significant. There are very few Orthodox in the United States, so they are not

significant.

In regards to Evangelical Protestants we see that the more Evangelical Protestants that are

in a county the more likely the county is to be dry. When there are a large number of Black

Protestants we find that the county is very likely to be Wet. Also, the more Catholics there are in

a community the more likely they are to be Wet. The category of other is simply everyone else

who does not fit into the other categories such as Jew, Buddhist, Atheist ect. The other category

shows that the more of “other” that is in a county the more likely they are to be wet.

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Conclusion:

Previous research has indicated that religiosity plays a role in determining if a county is

dry, moist, or wet. My research on this indicates that this is 20% of the influencing factors on

determining if the county is dry, moist, or wet. As previous research has indicated such as,

(Bock, Cochran, Beeghley. 1987, Pg. 99) “Churches prohibiting alcohol use have a higher rate of

abstaining, and religiosity is a better predictor of abstention for Conservative Protestants than for

other religions.”

My data also shows that Reference Group Theory appears to be correct, (Cochran,

Beeghley, Bock. 1988. Pg. 270) “Persons associated with denominations (such as Baptist and

Protestant sects) proscribing alcohol consumption display the lowest probability of use. Those

affiliated with a denomination (such as Methodist) taking a moderate stand regarding alcohol

consumption reveal a somewhat higher probability of use. Finally, those affiliated with

denominations (such as Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Jews, and Catholics) permitting alcohol

consumption show the highest probability of use.” Unfortunately, since Methodist fit into the

mainline protestant category the data cannot affirm that there is a moderate use of alcohol among

Methodist because Mainline Protestant category was not significant for the data.

As mentioned earlier in regards to Blue Laws such as alcohol control laws, it is a

possibility that the kinds of laws in each state and county may vary and be playing a role in the

other 80% of the causation for dry, moist, and wet counties. Further research, will fill in the gap

on the effect Blue Laws play on whether a person belonging to a more restrictive denomination

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in its views to alcohol will be willing to vote wet if certain measures are applied. For example, If

there is a dry, moist, wet vote will a person belonging to a Baptist religion be more likely to vote

yes to the sale of alcohol if there will be no sales on Sunday and liquor providers must stop

selling at a certain time. If this is true does the severity of these Blue Laws translate into strict

blue laws Baptist will vote moist or wet, moderate Blue Laws translate into Methodist and other

Mainline Protestant voting moist or wet.

Further data, yet to be included into this research is identifying which counties have high

tourism rates. As mentioned by (Ornsteing and Dominique M. Hanssens. 1985. Pg. 211) “socio

demographic and economic variables that affect consumer’s overall attitudes toward drinking.”

By identifying what counties have high tourism rates we can look at the number of Evangelical

Protestants in that county and see if Evangelical Protestants are more likely to vote moist or dry.

When looking at race (Ford and Charles Kadushin. 2002. Pg. 273) “Integrative dimension

of religion is more important in understanding risk for alcohol dependency for blacks, the effect

is limited to the measure of weekly important in understanding risk for alcohol dependency for

blacks, the effect is limited to the measure of weekly attendance.” We know how blacks behave

with alcohol and that places where there are large numbers of Black Protestants the more likely

an area is to go wet. But what about in areas where there are a lower number of Black

Protestants, is there a relationship on areas with White Evangelical Protestants, White Mainline

Protestants, and White Catholics are more likely to vote no to alcohol sales in a county where

there is a minority population and the alcohol vote has prejudice connotations in not wanting the

black community to have the opportunity to become inebriated. This can be found by finding the

total number of blacks living in a county.

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Work Cited

ARDA. 2010. “Black Protestant” http://www.thearda.com/rcms2010/blackprot.asp (Accessed

December, 13, 2012)

ARDA. 2010. “Evangelical Protestant” http://www.thearda.com/rcms2010/evangelical.asp

(Accessed December, 13, 2012)

ARDA. 2010. “Mainline Protestant” http://www.thearda.com/rcms2010/mainline.asp (Accessed

December, 13, 2012)

ARDA. 2010. “Sources for Religious Congregations and Membership Data”

http://www.thearda.com/RCMS2010/RCMS_Notes.asp (Accessed December, 13, 2012)

Bock, Cochran, Leonard Beeghley, 1987. “Moral Messages: The Relative Influence of

Denomination on the Religiosity-Alcohol Relationship.” The Sociological Quarterly Vol.

28, No. 1, pp. 89-103 http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/4121422 (Accessed December,

5, 2012)

Cochran, Beeghley and E. Wilbur Bock. 1988. “Religiosity and Alcohol Behavior: An

Exploration of Reference Group Theory” Sociological Forum, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 256-276

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/684367 (Accessed December, 5, 2012)

Ford and Charles Kadushin. 2002. “Between Sacral Belief and Moral Community: A

Multidimensional Approach to the Relationship Between Religion and Alcohol Among

Whites and Blacks.” Sociological Forum, Vol. 17, No. 2. Pp. 255-279

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/3070326 (Accessed December 5, 2012)

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Gerber, Grumber, Daniel Hungerman. 2008. “Does Church Attendance Cause People To Vote?

Using Blue Laws’ Repeal to Estimate the Effect of Religiosity on Voter Turnout”

National Bureau of Economic Research. pp.125

http://www.nber.org/papers/w14303.pdf?new_windo=1 (Accessed December, 5, 2012)

Ornstein and Dominique M. Hanssens. 1985. “Alcohol Control Laws and the Consumption of

Distilled Spirits and Beer” Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 200-213

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/254353.pdf?acceptTC=true (Accessed December 5,

2012)