Most & Least Religious Metropolitan Areas

As christians gather to celebrate the Easter Bunny (and look for the eggs he/she has hidden), the good folks at the Gallup Poll have released their latest information on the religiosity of the 189 major metropolitan areas in this country. They got their information from their Healthways Well Being Index surveys conducted between January 2nd and December 29th of 2012 of 244,917 adults nationwide. The margin of error ranges from less than 1 point for the largest metro areas to 6.5 points for the smallest areas.

They divided their poll respondents into three groups -- very religious, moderately religious, and not religious. Here is how they defined each group:

Very Religious -- based on saying religion is an important part of their daily life and that they attend religious services every week or almost every week.
Moderately Religious -- saying religion is important in their lives but that they do not attend services regularly, or that religion is not important but that they still attend services.
Not Religious -- saying religion is not an important part of their daily life and that they seldom or never attend religious services. 

The numbers shown above are the percentage that were defined as very religious. Nationwide, 40% of the people were classified as very religious, while 29% were moderately religious and 31% were not religious. My own city of Amarillo was evidently not big enough to be one of the 189 metro areas (but I would guess it would rank between Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington and El Paso in religiosity). If your metro area is in that number and you would like to see their religious statistics, you can go to page two of the Gallup Poll.

There were nine Texas metro areas large enough to be included in the poll. I have listed them below, from most religious to least religious. The number before their name is where they ranked in the poll on religiosity, and the first percentage given being the very religious (with the not religious percentage being in parentheses):

14. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission..... 53.0% (12.5%)
26. Beaumont-Port Arthur.....50.0% (16.7%)
28. El Paso.....49.8% (21.5%)
35. Corpus Christie.....47.5% (23.1%)
41. Dallas-Ft. Worth-Arlington.....46.8% (23.6%)
48. Houston-Sugar Land- Baytown.....45.6% (22.3%)
73. San Antonio.....41.3% (26.5%)
107. Killeen-Temple-Ft. Hood.....36.8% (34.5%)
124. Austin-Round Rock.....35.8% (36.6%)