Where is the most secular / agnostic / atheist place in the USA?
So in replying to a recent question, I commented how living in Southern California is pretty good for atheists as we do have a few Meetup groups to chose from, if you are in LA they have a Sunday Assembly that meets once a month, and there are plenty of Unitarian churches around if you need that sort of thing. So it is pretty cosmopolitan here.
I was wondering where others thought are the best places for atheists in the USA and why?
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.I personally think it's Seattle as I live here and know very few Christians. Also barely anybody in my social circle talks about their religious lives. I just went to Public Religion Research Institute's (PRRI) website and used their American Values Atlas to search for statistics and here are my findings:
Top Ten Least Religious Cities (2016 Data)
- Seattle (40%--percentage of religiously unaffiliated residents)
- Portland (39%)
- San Francisco (37%)
- Denver (33%)
- Boston (29%) tied
- Las Vegas (29%) tied
- Columbus (28%) tied
- Washington DC (28%) tied
- Los Angeles (27%)
- Indianapolis (26%)
Top Ten Least Religious States (2016 Data)
- Vermont (41%)
- Oregon (36%)
- Washington (35%)
- Hawaii (34%)
- Colorado (33%) tied
- New Hampshire (33%) tied
- Alaska (31%) tied
- Maine (31%) tied
- Montana (30%)
- Nevada (29%)
PRRI has some very useful data and their American Value Atlas is an amazing interactive online map. To see the full sets of data:
<a href="http://ava.prri.org/#religious/2016/States/religion/16" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="forumlink">[ava.prri.org]
Check "Religious Affiliation" and select "Religious Tradition" and you can see the breakdowns of religious (by religion) and non-religious residents by state and city.
Mantra
Level 6
Nov 3, 2017
4
Great info. Thanks. Surprised to see Los Angeles on the top list but not California on the list of States.
There is a correlation between education and rejection of religion. I am from Ann Arbor, MI and we always rank as one of the most educated cities. And like Portland, extremely liberal. I would bet that we have a relatively high proportion of anti-theists.
A2Jennifer
Level 8
Nov 3, 2017
3
If you are talking cities, then Portland Oregon. They have, or at least admit to, the least amount of church attendance of any major city in the U.S.
I imagine away from people out in the middle of the wilderness would be the actual most atheist place in the U.S.
snytiger6
Level 9
Nov 3, 2017
2
I'm a bit of a wilderness junkie, and live adjacent to the Santa Fe National Forest in a very sparsely populated county. There are enough open minded people out here, but like most other national parks and wilderness areas I've visited, the surrounding community here is very rural. I do find that many people who visit the wilderness areas are very open minded and willing to have reasonable discussions on many topics.
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