A new study finds the most post-christian cities in America.
Over the past year, Barna research has unpacked faith trends in the U.S. including a general reluctance to engage in spiritual conversations, an aversion to evangelism and the erosion of religious belief and practice.
These stories and more continue to point to an increasingly secularized nation made up of increasingly secularized cities.
To qualify as “post-Christian,” individuals must meet nine or more of 16 criteria including whether they identify as atheist, have never made a commitment to Jesus, have not attended church in the last year or have not read the Bible in the last week.
Based on that criteria here are this year’s top 10 post-Christian cities in America:
Springfield-Holyoke, MA (66%). Portland-Auburn, ME (60%), Providence, RI-New Bedford, MA (59%), Burlington, VT (59%), Boston, MA, Manchester, NH (58%), Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY (56%), Hartford-New Haven, CT (56%) and Rochester, NY (55%).
The two non-Northeast cities to make it into the top 10 are Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-San Luis Obispo, CA (54%) and Seattle-Tacoma, WA (54%).
The cities at the bottom of the list, or least likely to be post christian were Baton Rouge, LA, Knoxville, TN, and Charleston, WV.