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LINK Religious service attendance, mapped

Vermont (75%), New Hampshire (66%) and Maine (66%) have the highest share of adults who say they never or seldom attend church or religious services, compared to the national average of 49%, per a new Axios analysis of Household Pulse Survey data.

Why it matters: More than three-quarters of Americans say religion's role in public life is shrinking, per a recent Pew Research Center survey — the highest level since the group first started tracking such sentiment in 2001.

Many Americans are unhappy about that, with about half of adults telling Pew both that "religion is losing influence and that this is a bad thing."
About 57% of adults say that religion has a positive impact on American life, per Pew.
The other side: Mississippi (32%), Alabama (36%) and Louisiana (37%) have the lowest share of adults who say they never or seldom attend services.

Friction point: Nearly half of U.S. adults say they feel at least "some" tension between their religious beliefs and mainstream culture, Pew found.

That's up from 42% in 2020.
Zoom in: A separate Gallup survey published this week found that Latter-day Saints are the only religious group wherein a majority say they attend services weekly, at 54%.

30% of Protestants say they attend services weekly, compared to 28% of Muslims, 23% of Catholics and 16% of Jews.
Yes, but: Religious service attendance has been dropping for decades, per Gallup, driven largely by "the increase in the percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation."

HippieChick58 9 Mar 27
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4 comments

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2

I bet many Americans think Santa is a positive influence also. Dumb idiots.

I once saw a young girl in utter grief, sobbing uncontrollably, and could not be comforted. I learned that someone had told her that Santa did not exist and it was as if she had lost an actual loved one. Some might say, how awful that someone told her the truth about Santa. I say, how awful that someone told her the lie in the first place.

"There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and a proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: "They pray not only for their daily bread, but also for their daily illusion." The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led." - Eric Hoffer

4

But there is another aspect, some are just too lazy to think about anything, positive or negative. "Has any species ever come back from the dead?" "Are all religions man-made?" "Why isn't Superman in the comical books; he would fit in with all the other nonsense."

6

Far too many, as far as I’m concerned.

7

As a companion to compliment the picture.

Gives me hope!

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