Mississippi, Alabama and other Southern states are among the most highly religious states in the nation, while New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine in New England are among the least devout, according to some of the key measures used to determine levels of religiosity in the Pew Research Center’s most recent Religious Landscape Study. There are many potential ways of defining what it means to be religious, but for the purposes of this analysis, we looked at four common measures of religious observance: worship attendance, prayer frequency, belief in God and the self-described importance of religion in one’s life. In the most religious state, 77% of the population are highly religious compared with 33% in the least religious. Despite the high levels of Christianity, the fastest-growing religious affiliation is actually no religion at all.
– Being able to freely turn to whatever higher power one chooses (or none at all) is one of the principles America was founded on, but in some states, residents take their religion more seriously than others. A Pew Research Center survey from 2014 was placed under the 24/7 Wall St. microscope to determine which states were most and least religious, and Mississippi took the No. 1 slot, while New Hampshire fell at the bottom. Christianity is the most common US religion (70% of Americans identify as such), but those who don't adhere to any religion are the fastest-growing segment, with the percentage of "religiously unaffiliated" adults increasing in all states except for one. See which states are most pious and which aren't as wrapped up in worship: