A new nationwide study measuring religious devotion across all 50 states has confirmed something long suspected but rarely quantified this precisely. One small New England state has pulled so far away from the rest of the country on matters of faith that its nearest competitor isn’t even close, and the state sitting at the opposite extreme has nearly four times as many deeply religious residents.
The numbers come from Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, one of the largest religion surveys ever conducted in America, drawing on responses from nearly 37,000 adults across every state and the District of Columbia. The findings reveal a country still sharply divided along old regional lines, with a few genuine surprises mixed in.
How States Landed on This List
Pew classified respondents as highly religious only if they scored at the very top of a four-part scale, based on how often they pray, whether they believe in God or a universal spirit with absolute certainty, how much religion matters in their daily life, and how often they attend religious services. Each answer earned up to two points, for a maximum score of eight. Only those hitting a seven or eight qualified as highly religious, a bar cleared by roughly a quarter of all American adults.
The Ten Least Religious States in the Country
- Vermont, 13 percent highly religious
- New Hampshire, 15 percent
- Maine, 17 percent
- Nevada, 19 percent (tied)
- Oregon, 19 percent (tied)
- Massachusetts, 20 percent
- Hawaii, 21 percent (tied)
- Iowa, 21 percent (tied)
- Rhode Island, 22 percent
- Connecticut, 23 percent
Vermont’s 13 percent is not just the lowest in the nation, it undercuts even Washington, D.C., which came in at 18 percent. Only 17 percent of Vermont adults attend religious services at least monthly, compared to a national rate of 33 percent, and 44 percent of the state’s population scores a zero or one out of eight on Pew’s scale, the rock bottom of religious engagement.
New England’s Grip on the Bottom of the List
Five of the ten least religious states in the country sit in New England: Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. This is not a new phenomenon. Pew has run comparable surveys since 2007, and New England has occupied the bottom of the religiosity rankings in every single one.
New Hampshire’s numbers reveal just how fast that secular drift has accelerated. In 2007, 27 percent of the state’s adults identified as religiously unaffiliated. By the time of this latest survey, that figure had climbed to 48 percent, nearly doubling in under two decades and marking one of the steepest religious declines recorded anywhere in the country.
The Irony Sitting in Massachusetts
Few entries on this list carry as much historical irony as Massachusetts. The state where Puritan settlers built a colony explicitly around strict religious devotion in the 1600s now ranks sixth least religious in the entire country, with only 20 percent of its adults classified as highly religious. Its religiously unaffiliated population has jumped 20 percentage points since 2007, rising from 17 percent to 37 percent.
The States That Break the Regional Pattern
Not every entry on this list fits neatly into the expected coastal or New England mold. Iowa lands at 21 percent, the only Midwestern state to crack the bottom 10, in a region that typically splits the difference between the devout South and the secular coasts. Hawaii ties Iowa at 21 percent as well, though for entirely different reasons. Rather than one dominant secular trend, religious belief in Hawaii spreads almost evenly across all measured categories, shaped by the islands’ large Native Hawaiian, Filipino, Japanese, and Chinese communities and a spiritual landscape that includes Buddhism and traditional Hawaiian practice alongside Christianity.
The Staggering Distance From the Top of the List
At the opposite end of the spectrum sits Mississippi, where fully half the adult population qualifies as highly religious, the highest share in the nation and more than triple Vermont’s figure. South Carolina and a tie between Louisiana and South Dakota round out the most religious states, all comfortably above 45 percent. Nine states in total post highly religious shares above 40 percent, and every single one is either in the South or, in Utah’s case, home to a large Latter-day Saint population.
Utah’s story stands out as one of the more unexpected shifts in the data. Despite remaining firmly Latter-day Saint in character, the state’s religiously unaffiliated population jumped from 16 percent in 2007 to 34 percent in this latest survey, one of the largest swings recorded anywhere in the country.
A National Slide That May Be Leveling Off
Beyond the state-by-state rankings, the study points to a broader trend that has defined American religious life for two decades and may finally be pausing. The share of religiously unaffiliated adults nationwide has held essentially flat since 2019 at 29 percent, the first real stall after years of steady decline in Christian affiliation. Pew researchers are cautious about calling this a genuine turnaround rather than a temporary plateau, noting that adults under 25 remain far less religious than those over 74 on every measure the survey tracked, and that no generation in the study’s history has become more religious as it aged.
What This Means Looking Ahead
The regional divide at the heart of this data has not budged across three separate Pew studies spanning nearly two decades. New England and the Pacific Northwest have anchored the secular end of the scale since 2007, while the South and Utah have held the religious ceiling the entire time. With younger Americans consistently less religious than their elders and roughly a third of all adults having switched away from the religion they were raised in, the gap separating the least and most religious corners of the country shows little sign of closing anytime soon.
This article draws on data from Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study.
Amanda O’Brien is the creator and editor of The Boutique Adventurer. She has visited 80 countries and is a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers as well as the IFTWTA. She is passionate about wine had has just completed Level 3 of the WSET. Born in Australia, she lives in London.