Category: Cascadia exists (Page 3 of 5)

Is that it isn’t a bioregional map of Cascadia. Fellow Olympian Matthew Green commented awhile ago:

The upper Columbia watershed has more ecological similarity to the upper
Colorado watershed than to the lower Columbia. Consider that a
relatively modest (geologically speaking) change in topology could join
them into a single watershed, thus radically altering the
watershed-defined “bioregion” but without fundamentally changing their
ecology.

 So, to illustrate this, here’s that classic map of the Cascadian bioregion:

Here’s the Forest Service map of eco-regions, zooming into Cascadia:

  

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the map which emphasizes human
cultural similarities actually does a better job of showing ecological
zones than the bioregion map does.

Cascadian religion is pretty unique. Compared to other parts of the country, religions up here are fairly diverse overall and we have the highest percentage of people that don’t claim any particular religion at all.

There is some debate whether that means we’re godless up here, but it is at least one of the things that makes us unique.

I’ve also pointed out that this isn’t a recent development. At least since just before World War I we’ve had this tendency of not going to church.

So, where does this come from. How did Cascadians become the least churched region?

It has to do with Cascadia’s joint Appalachian and New England roots. Modern Cascadian culture is the joining of New England and Appalachian cultures cooked over 150 years in the cool rain of the west coast.

Those impacts, from personal freedom to friendly business politics, had a deep impact on religion. At, least from what I can see.

In my first Cascadian religion post I pointed to two maps, one on religious diversity, the other on religious adherence. Cascadia was one region that was high in the former and low in the later. There was one other region (actually a subset of a region) that showed the same trends, the upper Ohio Valley of Appalachia:

High in diversity:

Low in adherence:

 

…the southern areas with the highest numbers of unaffiliated and uncounted people are in the Appalachian counties of West Virginia, Virginia and eastern Kentucky — home to countless evangelical Protestant churches that are part of no denomination.

 And, here:

Appalachian religion is often associated with fiercely independent  Holiness sects and their rejection of educated clergy. This is but part of a pattern of persistent forms of rejection of the authority of educated professionals…

So, compared to other regions that were more homogenized and church going, Appalachia, in particular the upper Ohio Valley where many early Cascadians came from, was a rebellious soup of religion.

Compare that to New England, which by the 1840s (when migration to Cascadia had first begun) had just gone through a massive religious upheval. The Second Great Awakening was well into recession by this time, leaving behind its impact on other religious communities and New England in general:

Outside the evangelical churches there were also problems. In the
early stages of revivals, Episcopalians, Universalists, and Unitarians
were tolerant and sometimes mildly supportive. However, as passions
heated, denominational bigotry and a doctrinaire attitude was manifested
by many revivalists who denounced all who were not “born again.” Often
these were socially prominent people. This behavior alienated religious
liberals as well as non-Christians who resented the self-righteous
presumption of authority displayed by some revivalists. In and out of
churches, it often became a question of power and control.

For the New England businessmen that moved to Cascadia, what they thought of religion was likely colored by cultural attitudes of the conflict after the Second Great Awakening. One New England founded frontier area (eastern New York) that predates Cascadia by a few decades was so impacted by the Awaking that it was eventually called “the burned-over district.”

The number of new sects (from proto-Mormons, to Shakers and straight up utopians) rivals the home spun religion of Appalachia.

Cascadia wasn’t founded by groups of godless settlers. But, it also wasn’t founded by a monolithic group that subscribed to one religion. Rather, both the Appalachians and Yankees that settled Cascadia came from fractured religious cultures where individual freedom and personal attachment to belief was valued over discipline.

It is also no wonder that the impacts of the Second Great Awakening, which in addition to utopians also produced social activists pushing towards feminism and anti-slavery would grow into Cascadia’s political liberals.

It is sometimes implied that what makes Cascadia so darn Cascadian is a product of post Big Sort social impacts. Despite @ancientportland, you can often assume that the most blue and green parts of what makes us us are post World War II developments. But, certainly post 1960s.

Before that, Cascadia was a land of tree cutting, aluminum smelting Republicans bent on damming every river that could give a gigawatt, right?

Well, like the Cascadia Calm (ahem aka Seattle Freeze), how Cascadians approach religion has a much longer history, much longer than you’d assume.

In short, compared to other parts of the country, we don’t go to church that much. Not that we aren’t spiritual, we just as a region don’t go into churches. And, we haven’t for a very long time.

We’ve been the least churched part of the country since at least 1951, the date of the oldest survey data I could find. Both Oregon and Washington topped the list of least churched that year, with 27 and 30 percent respectively claiming membership in a church.

And, the non-pew sitting Cascadia goes further back than that even. In 1915, several church leaders put out their views on religion in the region(h/t Patricia O’Connell Killen).

Floyd Daggett:

The great problem, to my mind, in the Pacific Northwest is lack of religious life. Many causes contribute to this. The newness of the country, its people coming here from all parts of the world, strangers to each other, without the family and home connections; the population is cosmopolitan, with nearly every nationality represented, with a large proportion of Southern Europeans and Orientals, who have no religious life nor Sunday observance.

E.J. Klemme:

The people that builded this empire were compelled to push ahead or be pushed aside. They accepted the challenge and began crowding those in front with the same energy that they were being crowded by those behind. They knew no limit and recognized no master. Science was their handmaiden, and to succeed was the goal of their ambition.

This condition forced them to leave the Golden Rule beyond the Rockies, and they proceeded to do others before others could do them. In the East they were faithful church members; now they are not even church tenders. The ascent of the Great Divide seemed too steep for church letters. The air of the Northwest seemed too rare for prayer.

And, finally M.M. Higley. This fellow, instead of blaming the mountains and the air, might be hitting on something:

Another stumbling-block to a great many is the multiplicity of churches and creeds.

So, we know that the complaint of the unchurched Cascadia goes pretty far back. It would seem realistic that if it was true in 1915 and 1951 that it was also true in 1854 and won’t likely change for the near future.

I have a pretty good reason (better than blaming the hills) why Cascadia doesn’t go to church, but I’ll save it for next time. What’s your theory?

Generally speaking, Cascadia is understood to be the “Pacific Northwest.” I don’t like that PNW term, mostly because it is inelegant, but also because it is a bad description. Seriously, northwest of what exactly. I live in the center of the universe.

But, this discussion of the geography of Cascadia, what is inside the region and what is not, is pretty vital to every other discussion about Cascadia. Where you draw the borders defines what politics, culture and social structures belong inside Cascadia.

There are three major lines of thinking in terms of defining what is Cascadia.

1. Oregon and Washington, maybe some of B.C.  

This is the
simplest map and the worst of all three. Basically take the state and
provincial boundaries for the three existing subdivisions and there you
go.

I’m not even going to bother trying to show you this map. What, don’t you know where Washington and Oregon are?

It lacks the elegance or real world common sense of both of the maps below. It ignores any similarity the Alaska or California might
allow parts of them to be included. Bad map.

2. Biogregionalism

This is definition of the region bases its definition on natural features. This is a strictly accurate definition based on the original concept of Cascadia from the 1970s. The original Cascadian thinkers brought a lot of ecology into their definition, so a bioregion made absolute sense to them.

Especially when you look a map of the “Salmon Nation,” it looks surprisingly similar to the Cascadian bioregion.

3. West of the mountains.

The limitations of the bioregion map is that it includes so many human communities that are different from the population core of Cascadia. In short, there is very little cultural, social or political connections between Moses Lake and Seattle. 

The best map of this region is from Colin Woodard’s “American Nations,” basically showing a Chile shaped country hugging the Pacific Coast.

While is may seem too small to be real, this strip of coast is densely populated with a consistent climate, culture and politics. Even going back to the formation of California, Oregon and Washington, this region has a common origin and settlement pattern.

Even when places like the interior of Washington and Oregon were attached to the Willamette Valley and Puget Sound, it didn’t take long for them to want to leave. In a much larger, bioregional nation, the interior communities would constantly be at odds with the urban coastal cities. While geographically close to Seattle, Portland and Vancouver, they are culturally and politically closer to the broader interior west.
 
May favorite map, if you were wondering, is #3. And, I know I’m well in the minority here. Most people it seems want to include some portion east of the Cascades. While I think there is some parts of Cascadia that are leaking across the mountains (Cle Elum and Hood River), more often than not, those dry side places have more to do with Wyoming or Idaho than Edmonds.

In a recent discussion on the Cacadia subreddit, the bioregional map by default chosen as the better map (and with percentages). Though, the coastal areas scored the highest overall, much of the interior was still included in the final map. Strangely (to me at least) the Bay Area scored very low.

What I can point to is a point when political parties in Washington
tried to force greater political allegiance and were bucked by the
voters. About 15 years ago the Republican and Democratic parties sued
and were able to get Washington’s old open primary law tossed by the
courts. In the old version, Washington voters did not register by party
and were able to vote for any candidate in a primary. The top vote
getter from each party would advance.

After the courts
threw out that version (because the parties said that by not controlling
who voted in their primaries violated their rights to association) the
state instituted a more closed primary. Each voter would get a series
ballots with only a certain party’s candidates on each. You’d turn in
one ballot, forcing you to participate in only one primary.

This was similar to Oregon’s current primary law in which parties have the ability to open their primaries to non-registered voters.

The
Washington voters quickly rejected the more closed primary system,
opting instead for a Top Two primary, which actually just works as a
qualifying election. Instead of the original primary system that sought
to break down the walls that guarded parties by opening up their
nomination processes to the general public, the Top Two makes that
meaningless. The Top Two passes along the top vote getters, even if both
say they’re Democrats or Republicans.

A similar
election system was rejected by more than a 10 percent margin in Oregon,
giving argument to the point that maybe Oregon and Washington aren’t
that alike in political cultures. But, an analysis after Measure 65 went down in flames said the loss had more to do with the explanation of the measure than anything else.

That
Oregon voters were used to their current system and Washington voters
had a new system foisted on them by the courts and the parties was
probably the best way to explain the difference in the two initiative
results.

The most important thing to think about in
terms of the possibility of a Top Two system in Oregon is that the idea
itself in 2008 came from the political center of the state political
culture. Rather than some quixotic political dreamer, Measure 65 was
proposed by two former Oregon secretaries of state and supported by a
popular former (and now again current) governor. And, now its coming back again.

So, the idea of voting systems that ignore the institutional power of parties likely have some home in the Cascadian
political culture. Rather than a large group or band centered politics,
like religion, politics are grown from much smaller groups and from the
person themselves. It is important to participate, the civic good is
worth promoting. But, no large organization or institution is going to
tell the average Cascadian voter what to do.

I’m not sure what I expected to find when I was looking for some data on party affiliation broken down by state. I thought it would mirror religious affiliation. Strong groups of affiliated folks along the edges, but also a broad center of non-affiliated folks who didn’t feel like they belonged to any particular party.

In a way, I did find that. Both Washington and Oregon have strong numbers (usually a majority) of non-Democratic or Republican voters.

The surprising thing for me was that New England was even independent. New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine (for example) each have strong independent numbers above both Democrats and Republicans. Outside a few other states, this pattern is pretty unique to Cascadia and New England.

So, what I set out to see was that if Cascadia’s anti-institutional and independent streak in religion extended to politics. And, maybe that’s true. There might also be a connection between religion and politics in New England. If you look at the maps here, you see large swaths of high variety and low allegiance in regions across New England as well.

I think there’s something to the way we vote in primaries around here, the actual machinations of voting, but that’s for the next post.

From Cascadia PDX:

“The corporate state is not science fiction. Corporate agribusiness is
taking over what, how, and who grows food in my community. It has become
obvious that the government isn’t going to lift a finger to stop them.
It’s clear that the people, in the places where we live, must break the
chokehold of a system of law favoring corporations to one that
recognizes community rights.”

Dana Allen of Corvallis, Oregon

Dana is not expressing an unpopular sentiment around certain parts of Cascadia. Even outside what most would consider liberal urban enclaves, most people would express at least latent mistrust of big companies.

But, like a lot of things that make up modern Cascadia, this isn’t a new thing. Early settlers to Oregon and Washington brought with them a mistrust of the new corporate model. In the creation of both major American Cascadian states, delegates from Appalachia clashed with more corporate friendly New Englanders in how corporations should be handled.

In Oregon in the 1850s:

Many of the delegates entered the convention with a strong mistrust of
corporations. They had seen abuses in the Midwest and elsewhere in which
unscrupulous corporate operators had left innocent stockholders deep in
debt and workers unpaid. Other delegates saw no way for Oregon to move
forward without easy access to “the genius of our age to incorporate.”
Some of the debate would revolve around stereotypes of corporations as
large and uncaring machines of the economy that routinely chewed up
farmers and workers.

Eventually, they landed on  a sort of homegrown middle ground for corporations:

They looked to the benefits provided by corporations that would enhance
rather than threaten the rural character of the agrarian ideal. An
example could be viewed only a short walk from the convention where the
final work was being completed on the Willamette Woolen Mills the
territory’s first large factory. This corporate endeavor was home-grown
in origin, scope, and benefit. This was proof that, within the proper
framework and regulation, corporations could benefit Oregon and free it
from the need to import expensive products from far-off factories.
Otherwise, Williams warned, “We must pay tribute to Massachusetts and
New England all our lives, unless we can devise some way here for the
erection of manufacturing establishments in this state.”

When Washington got around to drafting a constitution in 1878, a lot of these same discussions went into crafting the document. Washington Territory didn’t end up getting statehood in the 1870s (an 1889 constitution was eventually approved by Congress). What was theoretical in Oregon in the 1850s was a practical discussion in Washington during their drafting.

Some of the provisions adopted by the Walla Walla Convention reflected distrust of corporations and railroad. All charter and special privileges that had not been fulfilled in good faith were to be invalidated at the time of the adoption of this constitutions. This provision was apparently directed against the Northern Pacific Railroad whose land policy was unpopular in Washington Territory because it made no real effort to build a line in accordance with its Washington charter until after 1880.

Other provisions including making stockholders individually liable for actions of their company and outlawing banks.

It seems like we might be in the habit of doing this every decade or so in Washington State, bringing back the legislature to make sure Boeing doesn’t leave Puget Sound high and dry. The risk of losing Boeing to some other state is an interesting case of regional tension, especially in how Colin Woodard describes regions in American Nations. 

Right now, at least on their commercial airline business, Boeing is company with deep  Left Coast roots. But, in recent years, Boeing merged with another aerospace company from Great Appalachia (McDonnell Douglas). Since then, they have begun using the political and economic culture of the Deep South to gain concessions from their Left Coast home.

This contrast between their Left Coast origin and Deep South destiny is interesting.

On the surface, the Left Coast (home of Portlandia, hippies and Starbucks) seems like the perfect anti-corporate foil to the open-for-business Deep South. But, as Woodard points out (and the Boeing legislative package illustrates) there is a deep vein of pro-business sentiment in the Left Coast.

The Left Coast was founded in part by New England capitalists, who built the region on large timber empires. This timber baron sentiment led directly to the founding of companies like Boeing. It was also based on a close understanding with civic leaders to do what was needed to keep people at work and business growing.

The other founding group along the Left Coast is the Great Appalachians. They could also be described as pro-business, but as expressed in the founding of Oregon, not exactly pro-big business. So, while companies like Boeing stayed home grown they were happy enough to stay out of their way.

That particular brand of pro-business from the Appalachians of the Left Coast might be turning against Boeing in their post McDonnell Douglas, Chicago headquarters period. The recent legislative session in Olympia was cast in a “David vs. Goliath” light by at least one Republican lawmaker:

“Boeing is vital to our state’s economy,” said Holmquist Newbry, R-Moses
Lake. “The thousands of jobs produced by the 777X program will have a
positive economic ripple effect throughout our state. The Legislature,
however, is being asked to provide special incentives for Boeing. My
response is this: If these policies are good for Boeing, then they
should be good for all of our employers. Unfortunately, expanding these
incentives to help other, smaller businesses survive and thrive is not
even on the table right now.”

…

“If a Goliath multi-billion dollar company and its team of lawyers have
difficulty navigating our state’s permitting process, and need the
certainty of a four-week permitting timeline, what chance do our
Mom-and-Pop businesses have in navigating the same permitting process?
If it’s good for Goliath, it’s good for David.”

 But, along with these various pro-business strains in the region, the Left Coast also developed a strong sense of civic mission (at least in urban areas) and environmental protection.

So, where in the country can Boeing get a better deal to build planes than its home region? Well, the Deep South. Remember, if Boeing does end up expanding more in the Deep South, it will be near Charleston, SC (from Business Week):

Beginning from its Charleston beachhead, the Deep South spread apartheid and authoritarianism across the Southern lowlands, eventually encompassing most of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana; western Tennessee; and the southeastern parts of North Carolina, Arkansas and Texas. With its territorial ambitions in Latin America frustrated, it dragged the U.S. into a horrific war in the 1860s in order to form its own nation state, backed by reluctant allies in Tidewater and some corners of Appalachia.

After successfully resisting a Yankee-led occupation, it became the center of the states-rights movement and racial segregation, as well as labor and environmental deregulation. It
is also the wellspring of African-American culture in America
and, 40 years after it was forced to allow blacks to vote, it
remains politically polarized on racial grounds.

For all our pro-business culture (we built Microsoft, Weyerhauser and Boeing), we Left Coasters also have a strong sense of unionism and environmentalism. This is the New England sense of community values expressing themselves in our culture. We also have an Appalachian sense of fair play that is questioning special deals for few large companies.

So, where is a company supposed to go to get away from all Left Coastiness? Well, Charleston, the birthplace of the Deep South!

The seemingly manufactured debate between the Mars Hill Church and Sound Transit on who should own some property in Bellevue seems out of place. When you dig into the debate, it leaves you scratching your head. Why would any organization (a church or whatever) seem to have any case when the rightful owner of a property doesn’t want to sell it to them.

But, once you take a step back and see the debate from the point of view of the religious landscape of Cascadia, it makes a bit more sense. Not much, but it helps to understand how churches like Mars Hill fit into the religious world and the broader social landscape in Cascadia.

While Catholics make up the largest single religion, there are almost actually a footnote when you see the larger religious picture here. There are two things to keep in mind when thinking about religion in Cascadia:

1. There is no more universally diverse region in the United States. That means there are more different sorts of active churches or other houses of worship in our region that any other place.

2. The most dominant sort of religious is actually the non-religious. There are more non-adherents in Cascadia than any other part of the country. And, this isn’t a new phenomena. It has been noted for at least a century that fewer people attend or are active in churches here.

You can see these trends in my first post on Cascadian religion here.

But, how does that help explain the situation with the Mars Hill Church?

Well, because Cascadia is so unchurched and so religiously diverse at the same time, it is possible for active and growing segments of religion up here (like so called entrepreneurial Christians) to become self sufficient enclaves inside the broader culture. To the point that places like Mars Hill are even more conservative than similar churches in more churches areas (like the South).

In “The None Zone” Patricia Killen explains that instead of bending towards the center left that is Cascadian social life, entrepreneurial Christians around here bend ride. In almost all political scales (aside from gay rights) they are far more conservative than there counterparts outside the unchurched Cascadia.

Because Cascadia is so religiously diverse, it doesn’t force small communities of faith to adapt to a larger religious culture. They are allowed to live and let live in their own communities. So, Mars Hill church is left alone among a sea of left leaning, non church going Cascadians, they separate themselves, and become more conservative against against the sea of let-live liberalism.

So, when it comes to a simple debate about a church wanting to buy a piece of land after a public agency buys it a few months before, there is plenty of room for each side talking past each other. Communities like Mars Hill probably and simply don’t see eye to eye with the local civic culture. So they’re way of trying to buy a piece of property for seem pretty tone deaf.