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The Unchurched Belt is a region of the US that has low rates of religion participation. The term derives from Bible Belt and the idea of the unchurched. The belt was originally found in the West and Northwestern United States, but has moved over the decades.
The term was first applied to the West Coast of the United States in 1985 by Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, who found that California, Oregon, and Washington had the lowest church membership rates in the U.S. in 1971, and that there was little change in this pattern between 1971 and 1980. Since 1980, however, California's church membership rate has increased; in 2000, the state had a higher percentage of church members than several states in the Northeast and Midwest. Some religious groups are undercounted in surveys of religious membership.
There has been debate as to whether the Western United States is still the most irreligious part of the U.S., due to New England surpassing it as the region with the highest percentage of residents unaffiliated with any religion. On a state level, it is not clear whether the least religious state resides in New England or the Western U.S., as the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) ranked Vermont as the state with the highest percentage of residents claiming no religion at 34%, but a 2009 Gallup poll ranked Oregon as the state with the highest percentage of residents identifying with "No religion, Atheist, or Agnostic", at 24.6%.
Figures in 2024 showed that 17 U.S. states reported having less than half their population being ‘highly religious’; those states ranged from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, to Hawaii and Montana. World Population Review website, Least Religious States, retrieved 2024-07-07 Graphs About Religion website, Which States are the Least Religious (2022)
2000
, the six states and provinces reported to have the lowest rate of religious adherence in North America were Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Nevada, and West Virginia. Although West Virginia was reported to have a low rate of religious adherence, it was above the national average rate of church attendance. Sociologist Samuel S. Hill, comparing data from the North American Religion Atlas and the American Religious Identity Survey, concluded that a "disproportionately large number of West Virginians" were not counted.Wilson, Charles Reagan & Mark Silk (eds.), Religion and Public Life in the South: In the Evangelical Mode, AltaMira Press, 2005, pg. 151. In 2006, Gallup reported that the lowest rates of church attendance among the 48 contiguous states were in Nevada and the New England states of Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine. Church attendance in the western states of Oregon, Washington, and California was only slightly higher. A 2008 Gallup poll comparing belief in God among U.S. regions found that only 59% of residents in the Western United States believe in God, compared to 80% in the East, 83% in the Midwest, and 86% in the South.
2010
A 2011 Gallup poll showed that when it came to the number of people seeing religion as important in everyday life, New Hampshire and Vermont were the least religious, both with 23%, followed by 25% in Maine.
2020
By 2020, it appeared that the Bible Belt was shrinking, and each year more states were reporting a higher level of non-participation in religion. Pew Research website, In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace, article dated October 17, 2019 North Carolina Baptist website, The Vanishing Bible Belt: The Secrets Southern Churches Must Learn to Stay Health, article dated February 10, 2021 In 2023, the Unchurched Belt had moved and covered Nevada, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska. Business Insider website, MAP: From the Bible Belt to the Rust Belt, the United States has 13 distinct ‘belts’ , article by Mark Abadi, Shavanne Gal and Lloyd Lee dated February 20, 2023
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