What are the most religious places in the world?

What are the most religious places in the world?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Let’s start by comparing nations. America’s Pew Research Center recently concluded 15 years of surveys about religion in 102 foreign countries, and a press release designates Indonesia as the most pious of them all.  The basis for these new rankings is how many adults told the pollsters that religion is “very important” in their lives.

That was expressed by 98% of those sampled in Indonesia, a fascinating nation of more than 17,000 islands, most of them uninhabited, arrayed across 3,100 miles.

Islam dominates, and the Nahdlatul Ulama religious reform organization claims 90 million believers out of the nation’s 270 million. N.U. preaches democracy, tolerance, and human rights for followers of all religions, in contrast with the hardline and authoritarian versions of Islam so familiar in the Mideast. For more on N.U., see the Q and A item for August 17: Could Islam Undergo a 21st-Century Reformation?

Next after Indonesia

Also ranking in the top 10 on the “very important” scale are, in descending order, geographically and religiously variegated Senegal, Pakistan, Mali, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Rwanda and Zambia. Africa and the Middle East account for 21 of the countries with scores of 80% or above, with five in Asia, and four in Latin America.

By comparison, Europe is quite secularized. Its most devout place is Eastern Orthodox Greece, in 49^th place. The United States, at #62 out of the 102, falls somewhat below the median degree of religiosity among the nations but well exceeds the entirety of Western Europe.

India, Hinduism’s heartland and the birthplace of Buddhism, is #27. The Jewish homeland of Israel is #64.  Italy, at the spiritual center of Catholicism, is #77. Germany, where Protestantism originated, is #91. Saudi Arabia, Islam’s historical holy land, and Iran, the major nation for Islam’s minority Shi’a branch, were not surveyed.

Communism’s impact

The rankings reflect the lingering impact of now-collapsed European Communism, an ideology that sought to exterminate religious faith by force. Orthodox Russia is #86 and all former nations within the former Soviet Union fall in the lowest third on the piety scale, along with those in Asia currently controlled by Communism.

The world’s 10 least devout nations are listed in this descending order: Taiwan, Finland, Latvia, Sweden, Britain, Switzerland, Denmark, Czech Republic, Estonia, and Japan at #102. In each, a tenth or less of the people say their faith is personally “very important.”

The pattern is roughly similar when people were asked whether they pray daily. Leading the top 10 is again Indonesia at 95%, followed in descending order by Nigeria, Senegal, Iraq, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Djibouti, Guatemala, and Guinea-Bissau. The 10 least prayerful places are all in Western Europe with Britain, the founding nation of Christianity’s Anglican branch, coming dead last in 102nd place.

OR the top holy sites

Another approach to this question is to rank particular religious sites around the globe. Our own Patheos.com has surveyed the “100 Most Holy Places On Earth” and lists its  Top 10 in this order:

Jerusalem’s Temple Mount a.k.a. Noble Sanctuary, with its uniquely sacred history for the three Abrahamic and monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The Great Mosque of Mecca, is the center place in Islam’s annual Hajj pilgrimage.

Mount Sinai (the actual site of which is disputed), where all three faiths believe that God revealed his law to Moses

The River Ganges in India is sacred for Hindu pilgrims from time immemorial.

The Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, central sanctuary of the Sikh religion dedicated in 1589.

The Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem, where Jesus taught and prayed before his crucifixion.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, a traditional site of Jesus’  burial and resurrection.

The Sistine Chapel, a Vatican worship venue where the cardinals elect popes, is famed for Michelangelo’s 16th-century frescoes.

Mahabodhi Temple in India is the traditional site of The Buddha’s Enlightenment.

The Western Wall, a Jewish prayer site at the surviving remnant of Judaism’s Temple compound, was demolished by Rome in the year 70.

OR the top U.S. states

What are “the most religious U.S. states”? They were recently proclaimed by Newsweek.com from varied data assessed on a scale of 0 to 100 by SmileHub, a charity research firm. Alabama was tops at 64.5, closely followed in order by the Sunbelt’s Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Midwestern states generally fell in the mid-range and many in the West on the low end. The three least devout states turned out to be Nevada (15.4), New Hampshire (12,4) and Maine (a mere 9,6),