Study: Connecticut is not a very religious state

According to a study published before Easter, Connecticut is the fifth least religious state in the Union or, if you prefer to look from the top down, Connecticut is the 47th most religious of the 50 states, due to some ties further down the list. 

Despite the slight discrepancy in the numbers from top to bottom, the inescapable conclusion is that we’re not a very religious state and we have plenty of company among our New England neighbors. Only Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont are less religious than Connecticut, while Rhode Island escapes the bottom, ranking as the 35th most religious state. New York is just above Connecticut, while New Jersey, alone in the Northeast, is in the upper half, the 19th most religious state. 

The survey, by the non-partisan Pew Research Center, asked more than 35,000 adult Americans in the 50 states and the District of Columbia about their religious affiliations, beliefs, practices and social and political views.

When the responses were analyzed, only about a third of the adults in the four least religious states were described as highly religious. Connecticut, although ranked just above the bottom four, has 43 percent of its adults in the highly religious category, putting the state 10 percentage points above its four least religious neighbors. Weekly church going in the state is not quite as low as in the bottom four, 28 percent to 20 percent. 

To be in the highly religious category, a respondent had to engage in at least two of the following practices: weekly attendance at a religious service, daily prayers, an absolute certain belief in God and considering religion very important in their lives. Fifty-seven percent of the Connecticut residents surveyed did not make the cut.

It’s not surprising that the most religious states are where you’d expect to find them, deep in the South, in what was once and can still be known as the Bible Belt.

Alabama and Mississippi are the nation’s most religious states, with 77 percent of their residents in the highly religious category, more than half go to church every week, seven out of 10 say their prayers every day and eight in 10 are certain about the existence of God. Just behind these two deepest southern states in religiosity are Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina and West Virginia, with Georgia, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Texas and Utah not far behind in the top 10 — with ties.

The highly religious states have large numbers of evangelical Protestants, the most conservative of all the Christian churches, religiously, socially and politically. 

The many evangelicals in the South and other primary and caucus states like Iowa may explain why Republican presidential candidates often sounded like revival preachers in the campaign’s early going. The GOP is the party of choice for evangelicals by a two to one margin nationally with an even greater margin in the South. 

A political and social profile of these voters finds 56 percent of them are Republican and 28 percent, Democratic. Sixty-four percent favor smaller government and 56 percent believe government aid to the poor does more harm than good. Fifty-five percent reject homosexuality, 64 percent oppose same sex marriage, and 57 percent reject the theory of evolution.

In Connecticut, just 13 percent of the adults in the survey identified themselves as evangelicals while 22 percent belong to mainline or historically black Protestant churches and 33 percent are Catholic.

As we well know and the survey confirmed, most Connecticut Protestants and Catholics are Democratic, with moderate to liberal views on political and social issues to match in this still bright Blue state.

I could only touch on various parts of the study in this space, but you can find much more to ponder by Googling “Religious Landscape Study, Pew.” So, what are we to make of it all? The answer is whatever you want.

Religion and the freedom of it and from it have been among the most basic rights since the founding of this nation. We have always been at our best as a people when we worship as we wish, with a tolerance for how the other guy worships … or doesn’t. 

Simsbury, Conn., resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.