The Deacon's Bench
Rhode Island is still the most Catholic state in the U.S., a new study has found.
A total of 44% of Rhode Islanders identified as Roman Catholic in a survey of nearly 53,000 Americans conducted last year by the Public Religion Research Institute, a five-year-old nonprofit organization based in Washington.
The results are similar to a 2008 Trinity College survey that showed 46% of Rhode Islanders identified as Catholic, down from 62% in 1990. That study also showed Rhode Island with the most heavily Catholic population in the nation.
Rhode Island is no regional outlier, though. The new poll put Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York in a three-way tie as the second most Catholic state, with 38% of their residents identifying that way. Nationwide, 22% of Americans identified as Catholic in the survey.
The second-biggest religious tradition in Rhode Island, however, is no religion at all: 21% of Rhode Islanders surveyed described themselves as religiously unaffiliated. The No. 3 religious tradition in Rhode Island was white mainline Protestant, at 15%.
The survey found unaffiliated residents now represent one of the top three religious groups in all but five states, reinforcing a widely noted trend in recent decades of fewer Americans identifying with organized religion.
Rhode Island is one of only four states where at least four in 10 residents identify with the same religious tradition. The others are Utah, which is 56% Mormon; Tennessee, which is 43% white evangelical Protestant; and West Virginia, which is 40% white evangelical Protestant.
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