Why Is Mississippi More Religious Than New Hampshire?

Last updated on: October 31, 2013 at 9:00 am by Guest Contributor

Why Is Mississippi More Religious Than New Hampshire? 2013-10-31T09:00:00-05:00 Guest Contributor

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New Hampshire is the least religious state in the union and Mississippi is the most religious according to Gallup data. A minority of New Hampshire residents see religion as being important in their daily lives (46 percent) in contrast to a large majority of Mississippians (85 percent). How can such huge differences be explained?

The Gallup organization (who collect the data in phone surveys) notes on their website that state differences in religiosity are poorly understood, and they are correct. Astonishingly, researchers have never crunched the numbers in an effort to understand religious differences within the country. So I decided to be the first to do so.

Quality of life

I wondered whether state differences might follow a similar pattern as that already established for different countries. Various researchers report that religion declines as the quality of life improves. Evidently, religion acts as a form of emotion-focused coping in the jargon of clinical psychology. This means that miserable living conditions drive people into churches.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where the quality of life is abysmal, almost everyone is religious (1). The quality of life is much better in Europe and religion is at a very low ebb.

This raises the question of whether New Hampshire resembles Europe in having a good quality of life and weak religion. Is Mississippi more like sub-Saharan Africa in having a lower quality of life and stronger religion?

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