According to Gallup (@gallupnews), Mississippi is the most religious US state, and is the first of 9 other states — Utah, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Oklahoma — where Gallup classifies at least half of the residents as “very religious.”
At the other end of the spectrum, Vermont and New Hampshire are the least religious states, and are 2 of the 5 states — along with Maine, Massachusetts, and Alaska — where less than 30% of all residents are very religious.
Read this in full and use the above interactive map.
And see USA TODAY’s (@faith_reason) “Topography of Faith” interactive map.
Gallup also reports that Americans who attend a church, synagogue, or mosque frequently report experiencing more positive emotions and fewer negative ones in general than do those who attend less often or not at all. Frequent churchgoers experience an average of 3.36 positive emotions per day compared with an average of 3.08 among those who never attend. This relationship holds true even when controlling for key demographic variables like age, education, and income.
Also see our previous blogposts “Study: Religiously Active People More Likely to Engage in Civic Life,” and “Christianity: World’s Largest Religion.”
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