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Cool Image of Evangelicals Around the Globe Misleading

Full image here.

It's a cool little image, but if not interpreted properly it's misleading regarding the overall strength of evangelicals. I'll comment specifically on Canada.

You see all these dots, apparently those are evangelicals. Whether they are one or 100 I'm not sure, but I can certainly tell you this image feigns the strength of evangelicals.

There's a lot of dark in Canada, assuming evangelicals are the only bearers of light, which they aren't. However, you'll see a nice Bible Belt brightness across the prairies. Reginald Bibby, sociologist in Canada, has done a number of surveys on numbers. Protestant Conservative comprise around 8% of all Canadians.

Let's pick a conservative city, say Calgary or Edmonton in Alberta. Assuming the 8% conservative number, there are about 200 000 Protestant Conservatives in Alberta, a province of about 3.35 million people. Certainly nothing to slouch at, but are these conservatives really doing anything in the community other uttering eternal condemnation (or doing nothing at all?)

If you look at the map, pick any city, you'll probably have a nice bright dot. Hooray, what does it mean? Well nothing other than at least one (or maybe a group) of evangelicals are in city. Nothing about their effectiveness, nothing about their value in the community, nothing on whether they are working to redeem creation around them.

Too bad you can't make a graph of those things, I surmise it would be far, far darker.

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