The Least Religious US States

Mississippi has nearly four times as many deeply religious adults as Vermont, and no two states in the country sit further apart on the question of faith. Vermont anchors the secular end. Just 13 percent of its adults count as highly religious, the lowest share in the nation, with New Hampshire (15 percent) and Maine (17 percent) close behind. The figures come from Pew Research Center's 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, which surveyed 36,908 adults across all 50 states and the District of Columbia between July 17, 2023 and March 4, 2024.

To land in Pew's highly religious group, a respondent has to score at the top of a four-part test: how often they pray, whether they believe in God or a universal spirit with absolute certainty, how much religion matters in their life, and how often they attend services. Clear that bar and you fall in the top quartile, which works out to roughly a quarter of all U.S. adults. In Mississippi, fully half the population clears it. In Vermont, about one in eight.

The map is blunt about it. New England takes five of the ten lowest spots: Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Oregon drags the Pacific Northwest into the bottom 10. Nevada, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Iowa round out the group. At the other extreme, the South runs the table. Nine states post highly religious shares above 40 percent, every one of them Southern or, in Utah's case, heavily Latter-day Saint.

How Pew Measures Religiousness

Here is the scoring. Each of the four questions is worth 0, 1, or 2 points, summed into a single scale that tops out at 8. Anyone who lands on a 7 or an 8 counts as highly religious. The full-sample margin of error is tiny, plus or minus 0.8 points, because the survey is enormous. State margins run wider: as narrow as 2.4 points in California, where Pew reached 3,746 people, and as wide as 8.1 points in Hawaii, where it reached only 348.

Those margins matter when states bunch up. Hawaii and Iowa both sit at 21 percent, close enough that the survey cannot really separate them, and the same goes for several pairs higher up the list. The big picture, though, is rock solid. Roughly 37 points separate Vermont from Mississippi, and the regional split holds whether you read the combined scale or any one of the four questions on its own.

Pew attaches one warning worth heeding. Do not line these 2023-24 figures up against the 2007 or 2014 studies on these particular questions. Pew changed how it ran the survey, and Appendix A of the report spells out what that did to the numbers. The pecking order among the states has barely budged. The absolute percentages, though, sit on a different yardstick.

The Ten Least Religious States

1. Vermont (13 Percent)

No state is less religious than Vermont, full stop. Its 13 percent even undercuts Washington, D.C. (18 percent, and not a state). Vermonters also turn up for services less than anyone else: 17 percent attend at least monthly, against 33 percent nationwide. And 44 percent of the state's adults score a 0 or 1 out of 8, the rock bottom of the scale, a share matched only by New Hampshire.

2. New Hampshire (15 Percent)

New Hampshire ties Vermont at the very bottom of the scale, with the same 44 percent scoring 0 or 1. What sets it apart is the speed of the change. In 2007, 27 percent of New Hampshire adults claimed no religious affiliation. By 2023-24, that figure had vaulted to 48 percent, one of the steepest climbs anywhere in the country.

3. Maine (17 Percent)

Maine completes the New England sweep at the bottom. Forty percent of its adults sit in the least religious quartile, third only to Vermont and New Hampshire. Attendance tells the same story: 18 percent of Mainers go at least monthly, barely more than half the national rate of 33 percent.

4. Nevada (19 Percent, Tied)

Nevada is the first state here that sits outside New England and the Pacific Northwest. Twenty-four percent of Nevadans land in the least religious quartile, and another 34 percent sit just above them in the medium-low band. At 19 percent highly religious, the state ties Oregon for fourth.

4. Oregon (19 Percent, Tied)

Oregon's 19 percent fits the Pacific Northwest pattern, where organized religion has been thinning for years. Its share in the least religious quartile, 42 percent, is the second-highest of any state, behind only Vermont and New Hampshire.

6. Massachusetts (20 Percent)

The irony is hard to miss. Massachusetts is where the Puritans planted their colony in the 1620s, and four centuries on it ranks sixth least religious in the country. Thirty-seven percent of its adults sit in the bottom quartile. The state has also logged one of the sharpest secular swings on record: its religiously unaffiliated share jumped 20 points since 2007, reaching 37 percent (it was 17 percent then).

7. Hawaii (21 Percent, Tied)

Hawaii breaks the New England-and-coast pattern. Its 21 percent ties Iowa, but the makeup underneath is different. Religiousness spreads almost evenly across all four quartiles, with no single band dominating. Large Native Hawaiian, Filipino, Japanese, and Chinese communities give the islands a religious landscape the mainland cannot match, with Buddhism and traditional Hawaiian practice sitting alongside Christianity.

7. Iowa (21 Percent, Tied)

Iowa is the real head-scratcher. It is the only Midwestern state in the bottom 10, sitting at 21 percent in a region that usually splits the difference between the religious South and the secular coasts. Its largest single group, 32 percent, falls in the medium-low quartile.

9. Rhode Island (22 Percent)

Rhode Island's low ranking is almost poetic. Roger Williams founded the colony in 1636 after the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay threw him out for preaching religious tolerance and the separation of church and state. He built it as a haven for dissenters, and its charter guaranteed freedom of conscience. Nearly four centuries later, at 22 percent highly religious, Rhode Island sits comfortably below the national average.

10. Connecticut (23 Percent)

Connecticut closes out the bottom 10 at 23 percent, and its profile is about as balanced as they come. Thirty-one percent of adults fall in the least religious quartile and 27 percent in the medium-low band. The state ranked fifth from the bottom in Pew's 2014 study, so despite all the methodological churn, its place in the pecking order has hardly moved in a decade.

What Has Changed Since The 2014 Study

Back in 2014, the bottom of the table also belonged to New England: New Hampshire and Massachusetts tied at 33 percent highly religious, Vermont and Maine at 34 percent. Do not read those against today's 13-to-17 percent range, because Pew rebuilt its methods in between. The durable truth is the ranking itself. New England has parked in the bottom 10 in every Pew survey, and the South has owned the top.

Nationally, the bigger news is that the long slide has stalled. The religiously unaffiliated share of U.S. adults has held essentially flat since 2019, at 29 percent, the first real pause in decades. The Christian share, 62 percent, has steadied too after years of decline. Pew is careful to call this a possible plateau rather than a turnaround. Younger adults remain far less religious than their elders, and 35 percent of Americans have already switched out of the religion they grew up in, a churn that keeps feeding the unaffiliated and draining Christianity.

Seven states drove most of that secular growth between 2007 and 2024: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Utah, Wisconsin, Missouri, Montana, and Pennsylvania. New Hampshire's leap was the biggest, with the unaffiliated nearly doubling to 48 percent (it was 27 percent), followed by Massachusetts at 37 percent (up from 17). Utah's climb stands out most of all: a jump to 34 percent, up from 16, in a state still firmly Latter-day Saint.

All 50 States Ranked By Religiousness

Here is where all 50 states fall, ranked by the share of adults Pew classifies as highly religious. The lower the number, the more secular the state. Tied states share a rank. Washington, D.C., which is not a state, would slot in at 18 percent, between Maine and the Nevada-Oregon tie.

Source: Pew Research Center, 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study. Survey conducted July 17, 2023 to March 4, 2024, among a nationally representative sample of 36,908 U.S. adults. National margin of error is plus or minus 0.8 percentage points; state-level margins range from plus or minus 2.4 to plus or minus 8.1 points.

The Regional Pattern Behind The Numbers

The two ends of this table have never swapped places, not once across Pew's three studies. New England and the Pacific Northwest have owned the secular floor since 2007. The South and Latter-day Saint Utah have held the ceiling. And the ground is still shifting under everyone. Pew finds adults under 25 far less religious than those over 74 on every single measure, and no generation has ever circled back toward faith as it aged. Bet on the bottom of this list staying the bottom.