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Sunday, December 27, 2009

Pew Research Poll Maps Religion in America

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According to a new poll by the Pew Research Center, Mississippi is the most religious state in the country, while Vermont and New Hampshire are tied for most godless. The poll is based off a 2007 survey that asked Americans about "the importance of religion in people's lives, frequency of attendance at worship services, frequency of prayer and absolute certainty of belief in God." Mississippi ranked highest in all of these categories, averaging at 82 percent religious, followed by Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana. On the other end of the spectrum, Vermont, 36 percent, was joined by Alaska, Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut. 56 percent of people nationally self-identify as religious.

Read original story in The New York Times Economix Blog | Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2009

Clever people have surveyed the nation and come up with a ranking of the most religious states in America. You will be incredibly unsurprised, and probably feel smug when you see it.

Via the New York Times Economix blog, the Pew Research Center polled people, back in 2007, on:

...the importance of religion in people's lives, frequency of attendance at worship services, frequency of prayer and absolute certainty of belief in God.

The national average, for percentage of people who were religious under those measures, was 56 per cent. The top ten were:

Mississippi (82%)
Alabama (74%)
Arkansas (74%)
Louisiana (73%)
Tennessee (72%)
South Carolina (70%)
Oklahoma (69%)
North Carolina (69%)
Georgia (68%)
Kentucky (67%)

And the bottom ten (note: states with too small a sample size are combined):

New Hampshire/Vermont (36%)
Alaska (37%)
Massachusetts (40%)
Maine (42%)
Connecticut/Rhode Island (44%)
Colorado (44%)
Oregon (46%)
New York (46%)
Montana/Wyoming (47%)
Wisconsin (47%)

Our intrepid statistics expert, Dr. Gabriel Snyder, has correlated the religious-ness rankings with the state happiness rankings from earlier this week on the following chart. Longer bars mean a higher ranking for the state. His analysis: there is no correlation. So get out there and be heathen-ous!


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