美国信教人口比最低的城市.docVIP

This is the most godless city in America ?? If you don’t believe in God, you might want to move to the Pacific Northwest. Portland, Ore., is No. 1 on the list of metropolitan areas with the most religiously unaffiliated residents (42%), according to the nonpartisan and nonprofit?Public Religion Research Institute’s?American Values Atlas, a survey of 50,000 people. Seattle and San Francisco were tied at second place (with 33%) on the list, and Denver (32%) and Phoenix (26%) were third and fourth. On the other end of the spectrum, Nashville was the metropolitan area with the fewest people without any religious affiliation (15%), followed by Charlotte, N.C. (17%), and Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando and Pittsburgh (all with 18%). Why the regional differences? “Portland is quirky and different, and very attractive to people who may not feel comfortable in other social environments, particularly with a stigma against those who are atheists,” says Daniel Cox, research director at the Public Religion Research Institute. In fact, “The Big Sort,” a 2008 book by Bill Bishop, documented the “clustering” of like-minded Americans around politics and culture. While 94% of people said they would vote for a Catholic for president and only 5% say they would not, 54% said they would vote for an atheist while 43% said they would not, a nationwide 2014 Gallup survey found. “The strong religious culture in the South reflects a variety of factors, including history, cultural norms and the fact that these states have high Protestant and black populations — both of which are above average in their self-reported religious service attendance,” according to a separate Gallup survey of over 177,030 U.S. adults this year on church attendance. And 10 of the 12 states with the highest self-reported religious-service attendance are in the South, along with Utah and Oklahoma. (Utah ranked as No. 1 because of the 59% Mormon population there, and Mormons have the highest religious attendance of any major re