The United States Census has not collected religious data since 1936. Some religious groups do not want to be numbered or to release numbers, so counting or not became a religious issue.

The same census, however, reveals much about trends that have a bearing on religious forces. So "sighting" religion takes a bit of infrared vision which, when employed, tells a good deal about the place and places of religion at the turn of the millennium.

The newspapers put their cartographers to work and, devoting themselves to the political implications of the counting in 2000, concentrate on what will happen in the redistribution of congressional seats. The message is simple: South wins over North, West wins over East. The Northeast may not be emptying, but it does not gain; the Southwest profits most. Prospering areas include California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and Texas in the Southwest and Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina in the Southeast. Meanwhile, touch upon the Great Lakes and you are in trouble: New York and Pennsylvania lose most, and Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan also lose relatively.

So what has any of this to do with religious trends? Plenty. It is a common observation in the sociology of religion that inherited loyalties do not travel well. Snowbirds who flee to Sunbelts don't always take their denominational loyalties and traditions with them. Many gravitate to the faith communities which have adapted to and exploited their new cultures. Of course, plenty of the people from Great Lakes and Northeastern states transplant what they have been used to. But even then, they tend to acquire colorations of the cultures adapted to their new sites.

Look at an atlas of American religion and you find that mainstream and conservative Protestants not typed as "evangelical" (the United Church of Christ, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Disciples of Christ, and Lutherans)are strongest in the states that lose population status. Do these denominations hold enough of the transplants in new settings for them to hold their place nationally? The population moves also help account for some of the conservatizing of the United Methodists, as the Sunbelters absorb migrants from the more staid North.

If what we call the "country-and-westernization" of American religion in the past half-century is to slow down and let the more traditional and classic styles of worship, the arts, congregational life, and social ethics to thrive, population movements now and tomorrow will not provide much help. So suggests one more decanal census. The Catholic story differs somewhat, but is not exempt from the trends.