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It’s fair to say that Utah is considered a religious state.
It’s certainly a sentiment I hear echoed as I travel around the country, and there’s good data to back it up: There really is a lot of religious fervor in Utah. Utahns lead the country in going to church once a week or more and lead the country in the percentage of population claimed by a church. As of 2019, 96% of state legislators in Utah belonged to a church, 90% of those being members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
But I also want to point out an interesting fact: There’s a surprising number of unreligious people in Utah.
You see, religiousness isn’t as simple as “do you believe or not?” Some people strongly believe in a God, some only are “fairly certain” or “not too certain,” and some “don’t know” or “don’t believe,” as one poll put it. Some people go to church weekly, some go on an irregular basis and some don’t go at all. There are degrees to religiosity.
And what we regularly see when we look at the data for Utah is that while there are probably the greatest number of highly religious people in Utah, there are not many people who are only somewhat religious when compared to other states.
Utah’s share of “nones” — people who consider themselves atheists, agnostic or unaffiliated with a church — is actually higher than many other states. Furthermore, that share is growing rapidly — far quicker than religious growth in Utah.
Let me show you the details.
How many Utahns never attend church?
Most studies that ask Americans how often they attend church use the question: “Aside from weddings and funerals, how often do you attend religious services?” Then, they give seven possible answers to choose from: “More than once a week,” “Once a week,” “Once or twice a month,” “A few times a year,” “Seldom,” “Never” and “Don’t know.” Pew, the Public Religion Research Institute, and the Cooperative Election Study ask the question this way.
But when reporting the data, those groups tend to bucket the answers into three groups: those who go once a week or more, those who go less than once a week, and those who go seldom or never. That itself is a choice that simplifies the reporting but hides a bit of what’s happening.
So, for example, when statistician Ryan Burge wrote his column on “Which States Are the Least Religious? Which are the Most?”, he used how many people “seldom or never” attend religious services as an important part of his ranking system, with data from the CES. Here are those results:
Utah is sixth from the bottom. Add that to the fact that Utah has the highest percentage of folks who go once a week or more to church, and you can see how Utah’s been named the No. 1 most religious state by Burge’s analysis. But now, look at where Utah ranks in terms of the percentage of population who never go to church:
Holy cow. Utah’s smack-dab in the middle! Thirty-four percent of Utahns say they never go to church, 25th in the nation. That’s because the number of Utahns who say they “seldom” go to church, or go to church just “a few times a year” is the smallest percentage in the nation.
In other words: In Utah, you’re either likely to go church every week, or you don’t go at all.
You can see this result in a bunch of different data points. Take the Pew Research Religious Landscape Study, which asked people how important religion was in their life. Utah had one of the highest responses rates for “very important” (58%), but the second-lowest for “somewhat important.” (15%) And, once again, Utah ranked surprisingly highly in the number of people who said religion was unimportant (25%) — the 18th-highest rate in the nation.
How many atheists, agnostic or unaffiliated people?
The Religious Landscape Study also showed that Utah ranked in the middle of the pack in the number of people who never pray (27th), the number of people who don’t believe in heaven (29th), and don’t believe in God (29th).
In general, Utah tends to have approximately the same number of people who respond that they are atheist, agnostic or unaffiliated as much of the rest of the country. Here’s the list of states by people who responded as a religious “none,” from highest to lowest:
What’s really interesting is how much that number seems to be changing over time. Burge looked at the states with the largest increase in the number of atheists, agnostics or unaffiliateds and found that Utah had some of the largest growth there when comparing the 2008 CES to the 2022 CES.
Again, that’s a finding backed up by previous research — though it’s less recent than the CES. The Pew Religious Landscape Study compared 2007 and 2014 results in their work; in 2007, only 20% of Utahns weren’t “absolutely certain” God existed. In 2014, that number jumped to 39%. (It’s unfortunate that Pew didn’t replicate its Religious Landscape Study in 2021, but it didn’t.)
A previous trend existing doesn’t mean it will continue. Past performance is not necessarily predictive of future results, as the stockbrokers’ disclaimer says. Countrywide, demographers expect continued growth of people largely unaffiliated with religion, but Utah’s out-of-norm growth in this area may or may not persist.
Still, this is a fascinating result that says a lot about Utah. Yes, we have one dominant culture to be sure — but don’t write off the thriving unreligious counterculture as well.
Andy Larsen is a data columnist for The Salt Lake Tribune. You can reach him at alarsen@sltrib.com
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