I am not making any argument as to the relation between religion and poverty, I am merely discussing the two as they relate to southern region of the U.S. and the areas around Portland, Oregon.
In the south, the Baptist evangelical religions are most prominent. By looking at the map above, you can see the region defined as the south, merely by its prominent religion.
Portland on other hand is prominently catholic, however the obvious influence of religion is not as big as it is in the south. The south contains some of the largest church congregations in the world. For example, Georgia and Oregon are relatively similar in geographic size, however Georgia has 80 megachurches (more than 2000 weekly attendance) and Oregon has 23. North Point Community Church in Georgia averages 23,000 people per attendance, while the largest I could find in Oregon was Beaverton Foursquare Church at 6000(1).
A hundred years or so ago, the poverty in the Southern region could be directly linked to the proportion of African Americans in a region. In 1900, the percentage of African Americans in the south was 89.7% of the entire U.S. population. Today it is around 55%. The south is no longer as poverty stricken as it used to be and the affect of a populations ethnic origin is also not nearly as much of an influence as it once was(2).
Although I was unable to find the numbers for 1900, Portland now has only 6.4% of its population of African American descent(3). This may have played a role in the late 1800's and early 1900's for its prosperous economic growth, but I believe it has little weight in today's economy.
1. http://hirr.hartsem.edu/megachurch/database.html
2. Stephen S. Birdsall, Regional Landcapes of the United States and Canada, 7th edition.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland,_Oregon#Climate
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