Posted on 01/31/2009 9:16:43 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Washington-- Want to be almost certain you'll have religious neighbors? Move to Mississippi. Prefer to be in the least religious state? Venture to Vermont.
A new Gallup Poll, based on more than 350,000 interviews, finds that the Magnolia State is the one where the most people 85% say yes when asked "Is religion an important part of your daily life?"
Less than half of Vermonters, meanwhile 42% answered that same question in the affirmative.
Joining Mississippi in the top "most religious" states are other notches in the Bible Belt: Alabama (82%), South Carolina (80%), Tennessee (79%), Louisiana (78%), and Arkansas (78%).
New England predominates in the top "least religious" states: Following Vermont are New Hampshire (46%), Maine (48%), Massachusetts (48%), Alaska (51%) and Washington (52%).
"Clearly, states in the South in particular, but also some states in the Southwest and Rocky Mountains have very religious residents and New England states in particular, coupled with states like Alaska and others, are irreligious," said Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of The Gallup Poll.
The reasons why, however, are far less clear, observers said. For example, some might attribute the religiosity of Mississippi to the high percentage of African-Americans long known for being comparatively highly religious who live there.
"Mississippi is still No. 1, even if we look only at whites," said Newport. "Whites in Mississippi are also very religious."
Overall, Gallup researchers found that 65% of all Americans said religion was important in their daily lives. The total sample of 355,334 U.S. adults, including respondents with land-line telephones and cellular phones, had a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point. Some states had margins of error as high as plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Newport was surprised that one state Utah did not make the "most religious" list, given the state's large Mormon population.
"They apparently have two kinds of people in the state," he said. "They have the very religious and devout Mormon population but it also looks like they have a lot of nonreligious people."
Mark Silk, director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, said Gallup's findings reflect research conclusions from the upcoming American Religious Identification Survey, which he is working on with other scholars.
"New England is now slightly ahead of the Pacific Northwest in terms of the high rate of unchurched people," said Silk, co-author of One Nation, Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics.
Although evangelicalism may be making some inroads in Western states like Washington and Oregon, he attributes the predominance of New England states in the "least religious" category more other demographic trends in the Northeast.
"What we are finding is a considerable drop in New England in the Catholic population," said Silk, whose center is based in Hartford, Conn.
And it's a matter of them moving away from the church, he said, not the region. "Catholics are holding their own nationwide because of Latino immigration but, relatively speaking, there's little of that in New England."
Silk suspects some Catholics have left the church because of the Catholic sex abuse scandal that first erupted in Boston, which "kind of pushed some sort of relatively loose affiliation Catholics over the edge."
For his part, Newport said Catholics overall no longer are more religious than the average American - when it comes to stating the importance of religion or in attending church services but it's hard to specify exactly why New England states figure so prominently in the "least religious" states.
"They're about average and that's a change," he said. "It used to be you'd find Catholics significantly higher. I don't know to what degree that would affect what's going on in New England."
Vermont, that figures. Vermont’s specialty was exposed on O’Reily where Vermont strongly protects their pedophiles over child rights. Not a good place to raise kids.
Liberalism and Godlessness in perfect lockstep.
Where are the freepers who claim the GOP is the party of Southern hillbillies and needs to change?
The only puzzle is this -— why isn’t religiosity inversely correlated with crime rate ?
I’d like to see which states have the highest and lowest crime rates in the country.
Also, I like to know if religiosity DECREASES out of wedlock pregnancies. I hear that Mississippi has one of the highest out of wedlock birth rates in the country.
The secularist will use this statistic as an argument FOR less religion.
I think there may be a direct correlation in some instances regarding criminal and immoral heborior. Here are my theories why FWIW: Criminals tend to go where the victims are easiest to victimize. Religious people want to think the best of others and tend to trust too much, hence a lot of them get victimized compared to less trusting folks. As to birthrate, maybe but then that may not be out of whack compared to abortions in other less-religious states. Pregnancies may be the same or higher in those other states; it’s just that in those other states, the babies are disposable. Also, single mothers know they can access charitable sources in religious states, in addition to state or federal benefits. Religious states tend to divide between good people and bad people much more clearly than in other states. People either love religion or hate it, especially whatever religion is dominant in the area. There tends to be less middle ground.
Last I read, I think Utah has the lowest crime rate.
Poorest state equals most attention to God.
Argument for a depression being good for the country.
Ironically, Mississippi not only has more natural disasters (NOAA) than Vermont on average, they are also polar opposites when it comes to crime committed by both citizens and public officials, i.e. Mississippi has considerably higher crime and corruption than Vermont (Department of Justice: Census Bureau).
Just proves that just cause you say you’re “religious” doesn’t mean you practice it nor does God care what you claim to be (and maybe vice versa).
Out west
I’d also like to see statistics on the average educational levels of the most religious vs. the least religious states.
Mississippi is nearly 40% black, the highest in the nation.
The crime rate and illegitimacy stems SOLELY from that fact.
Whites in Mississippi have very low crime rate and vote extremely conservative.
Many whites attend church regularly as do a fair number of blacks...particularly rural ones.
And Mississippi is one of the largest charity givers per capita yet quite poor compared to say stingy Massachusetts.
Is that clearer?
I just googled it. Mississippi has the lowest family income, lowest quality of life. lowest quality of health care, education. But then, it is the most religious state. Go figure. Secularists are going to have a field day with this data.
On the other hand, If Vermont is such a heaven, why do only 600,000 people reside there? Is it because of the weather ? Or maybe because Vermont is too small ?
It is interesting to compare the list of the most religious states, to the list of smartest states .... particularly if you look at the top and bottom ten in each list.
The correlation isn’t 100%, but its pretty strong.
http://www.statestats.com/edrank.htm
That may also be a factor but I hesitate to link honesty and morality with levels of education. It’s a question of character, not education.
That too.
Mississippi also has way more people than Vermont. I wonder if thats been taken into account.
I think the only person having a field day with it is you.
Not sure what your real reason is.
This survey didn’t make any differentiation between various kinds of “religious” people (good or bad).
Michigan, at 64%, has a higher percentage of religious people than one would expect. Perhaps the Muslims in Dearbornistan are driving up the numbers. And when it comes to religious states with high black populations, for many “religion” is Jeremiah Wright.
New England is less religious because of the rot within the old Congregational churches, which were once the Puritans, I believe. That denomination, now the Church of Christ, is extremely left wing. The left wing politics disiplaced the preaching of the Gospel and old-time New Englanders drifted away from the church. That began long ago, probably in the 19th century. Maybe some church historian can shed some light on this.
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