A look at U.S. religious landscape
| • | Poll shows religion losing its hold |
USA Today
For all the diversity of American religion, certain regional patterns emerge, born of historical experiences and immigration trends.
Catholic centers are the Northeast and Southwest. Baptists congregate in the Deep South. Asian philosophies concentrate in the coastal West.
And the trend to "no religion" peaks in the Mountain West. By contrast, in North Dakota, a stronghold of Lutherans (35 percent) and Catholics (30 percent), only 3 percent of adults claim no religion.
Other survey results:
• About one in four of America's Jews (25 percent) and Muslims (24 percent) live in New York.
• California has four in 10 of the Buddhists in this country, 30 percent of the Hindus and 15 percent of all U.S. adults who say they have no religion.
Scholars of religion and sociology call the Northwest and Southern California the "anti-Bible belt," says political scientist John Green, director of the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron.
The regions' rapid growth means lower participation in any group activity, even church. Plus, Green says, "the West has a culture of skepticism and individualism that mitigates against belonging to churches, although people may join environmental groups or have quite active spiritual lives outside institutional religion."
