PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island residents are among the least religious in the country, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life in Washington.
Just 44 percent of Rhode Island and Connecticut residents surveyed by Pew said that religion is “very important in their lives.” The two states ranked No. 42 out of 46 in their share of deeply religious people. (The center surveyed 482 people in the two states, which were combined because of their small sample sizes.)
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The least religious states of all were New Hampshire and Vermont (which were also combined), where 36 percent of residents said religion is very important to them. Alaska came second (37 percent), followed by Massachusetts (40 percent) and Maine (42 percent). Colorado tied with Rhode Island and Connecticut at 44 percent.
Nationally, 56 percent of Americans described religion as very important to them. The state with the highest share of deeply religious people was Mississippi, at 82 percent.
Rhode Island and Connecticut also ranked second from the bottom in belief in God, with just 57 percent of those surveyed expressing absolute certainty in God’s existence. New Hampshire and Vermont ranked last at 54 percent.
Only 30 percent of Rhode Island and Connecticut residents said they attended religious services at least once a week, tied with Massachusetts and Nevada for the eighth-lowest share. Alaska was lowest of all at 22 percent.
The survey results came from the Pew Forum’s 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.
Additional information is available at pewforum.org.
