A Dubious Distinction
Any way you look at it, I am in the Least Religious State. Geographically, that is.
The Pew Research Center has just come out with another one of those surveys about our national religious life, and it probably won’t surprise anyone to learn that New England is last, last, last. Read all about it here. We have an impressive array of colleges and universities, but when it comes to pious people—at least in the traditional church-going sense, I hasten to add—we are at the bottom of the heap.
Good ol’ Cotton Mather, proud Puritan that he was, must be turning over in his grave.
After all, didn’t a whole lot of brave people endure seasickness (that alone would have been a deal-breaker to me) followed by all kinds of other deprivations in order to assert their freedom of religion, determined to worship in the way that made life meaningful to them even if they would have to start all over again in a new land which provided heaps of misery at first?
As I check out the rankings, I can’t help but be struck by the irony of my particular situation.
According to the results, each weekday morning I leave the house that I share with a bishop who presides over an Episcopal diocese in the state ranked 50th to drive to my job in a Catholic school in the adjoining state that is also ranked 50th. Way to go, New Hampshire and Massachusetts! I’m not sure whether to feel special, out of synch, or just plain weird. Am I accepting this daily condition of moving from one religious island to another, dots on the map, without fully recognizing not only the vastness of the secular ocean around me but also how the rising level of this ocean might actually pose a threat to all of us?
To complicate matters further, I myself came from a family– in New York, just a tad higher in religiosity– that itself would have scored very low on this kind of scale. Plenty of people called up our house looking for information on voting tendencies, television watching preferences, what kind of home repairs we might need; but I never recall a voice on the other end of the line asking how often we prayed or went to services. If anyone had, it sure would have been interesting to watch my mother handle the call. Totally flummoxed, she might have said something like, “Well, no, we’re not doing those things…. but we are doing a lot of outdoor work around here!”
So I happen to be a person who emerged from a household, for better or worse, without any noticeable religious life who now finds herself, through the mystery of one thing leading to another, in the company — by day and by night — of deeply religious people, against a backdrop of life driven predominantly in the non-church lane.
What I wonder is, when you see a listing of all the states in numerical order according to 
“how religious” people who live there say that they are, can you infer anything else about the true character of residents within those borders? When we drove through #1 Alabama last summer, for instance, and saw church after church along the highways, were we in a territory that is demonstrably closer not only to God but also to godliness and plain old goodness than the territory of rocky New England, where houses of worship still gleam beautifully in town squares at night, telling tales of past congregations?
Surely the Pew people didn’t intend it this way, but the question “How Religious Is Your State?” is framed as a kind of challenge, similar to “How Big Is Your House?” or “How Clean Is Your Water?” or, to quote the Bee Gees, “How Deep Is Your Love?” I’m just not sure if something is implied here – about more vs. less—that we’re all supposed to agree on.
This past week, I spent early mornings in a Catholic school cafeteria, located in one of the two 50th least religious states in the country, checking in students who were about to leave on vans for work. Through a door to an adjoining room, I saw a cluster of figurines, including Jesus, watching over us. Apparently, the huge church across the street stores them there.
As the students politely greeted me, one by one, ready to do their duty for the day, I couldn’t help but conclude that, whatever their family’s particular practice of faith might or might not be, they were walking the walk at that moment. Were they still in the Least Religious State? Maybe, but I don’t think Jesus much minded.