This being Sunday, Super or not, it’s an appropriate day to try to offend some religious sensibilities, but I’m sorry to say that in the process I must take my home state to task.
I reported back in June that Connecticut was NUMBER THREE!, trailing only Vermont and New Hampshire, in the degree to which its residents were not religiously inclined. It was a ranking about which we could be deservedly proud, and it seemed at least possible that we could overtake our frozen neighbors.
So imagine my dismay to find (via the Washington Monthly) that we have slipped to Number 10, according to Gallup:
The unkindest cut of all is that we trail Alaska, home of the Weird Witch of the North.
Before I go on to try to exculpate our common home from this blow to our reputation, I must shift a bit. Take a look at this:
The greener the state, the more religious. Now what’s interesting about this is that the extent of religiosity bears a more or less direct relationship to some other rankings. This being Sunday, therefore a day of rest, I’m not going to go to the trouble to prove all this, but I know I’ve read elsewhere that these deep green states also lead the nation in out of wedlock pregnancies, divorce rates, lousy education (except California is now in the latter group, despite its lack of religiosity), low incomes, low reading rates, and just general overall ignorance. No surprise there.
Anyway, back to Connecticut’s relatively poor showing. The answer may lie in the differing polling techniques. The Pew poll I reported on in June asked respondents whether they were “absolutely certain” that God or some god-like analog existed. The Gallup folks asked a different question: “Is religion an important part of your daily life?” Apparently, if you believe the numbers, religion is an important part of the life of every Nutmegger who is certain of the existence of the Hairy Thunderer. There’s reason to believe we would rise in the rankings if the question were slightly different. Still, being behind Alaska is somewhat humiliating.
Now, in defense of our Bible Belt neighbors, it is only fair to say that the high negatives obtained in those states are probably the result of massive lying on the part of the respondents. After all, they live in a culture where people are expected to say that religion is an important part of their life. Here in the Reason Belt, we have a more tolerant attitude. Confidentiality or not, people tend to say what they believe is expected, rather than what they really think.
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