Belief in God remains highest in the US South and lowest in the Northeast

Key points

• Belief is strongest across much of the South
• Mississippi and Alabama stand out on the map
• Vermont and other northeastern states rank lower

Belief in God varies sharply across the United States, with some of the highest levels concentrated in the South and some of the lowest in New England, according to data from the Pew Research Centre.

The map shows Mississippi and Alabama at around 80%, while Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia are among a wider group of states where belief is particularly firm. Much of the Northeast and West records lower shares, with Vermont near the bottom at around 40%.

The broad pattern fits Pew's more recent 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, which surveyed 36,908 US adults across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Pew found the South remained the country's most religious region across several measures, including belief in God, prayer and the importance people place on religion.

Despite the large differences between states, belief in a higher power remains common across the country.

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Pew's latest national figures show 83% of US adults believe in God or a universal spirit. Some 86% believe humans have a soul or spirit, while 79% believe there is something spiritual beyond the natural world.

Those figures are broader than simply asking whether someone believes in “God”, however. Pew's questionnaire allows respondents to say they believe in God or a universal spirit, and it separately measures how certain they are about that belief. That distinction means the map should not be interpreted as a simple measure of membership in organised religion.