There is an element of christian fundamentalists in this country who still like to claim this is a christian country. They would even like to change the Constitution to more closely resemble there own narrow view of the country -- and to allow them to discriminate against their fellow citizens who don't believe as they do.
Fortunately, most Americans don't agree with them. The huge majority of Americans don't want politics being preached from the pulpit, and significant majorities are departing from the fundamentalists on most social issues (Roe v. Wade, same-sex marriage, etc.). Now the Gallup Poll has done its poll on American religiosity again (questioning 348,306 adults about their religiosity between January 1st and December 31st of 2012 -- with a margin of error of only 1% due to the large sample size).
What they found was that this is not as religious a country as many of those fundamentalists claim it is (or would like it to be). Only about 40% of Americans claimed to be very religious, while 31% said they were not religious at all (and the remaining 29% said they were moderately religious). Only 8 states had a very religious percentage that was above 50% (all of them in the "Bible Belt"), while 6 states had their percentage of the very religious at below 30%. It looks like most people in America are happy to live in a secular nation that respects the freedom of everyone to believe (or not believe) in whatever makes them individually happy.
Here is the state-by-state religiosity breakdown:
Another interesting statistical fact is that divorce rates are higher in states with a conservative protestant majority. Reasons may include that people of faith are encouraged to marry younger and living together prior to marriage is frowned upon.
ReplyDeleteThe more religious the more abortions, more STD, the more misery. After all they are told repeatedly that they are awful, sinful people going to hell, they must pray, love jesus and not do sex and not look lustfully on others. What a miserable way to live the only life one has.
ReplyDeleteAnd to think that as a raving atheist I moved from the lest religious (NH) to one of the most (NC).
Oh!!! Wwo00 is Me!
I'm moving to Vermont.
ReplyDelete