Seattle is the least-religious large metro area in the U.S.
Seattle is the least-religious large metro area in the U.S.
In the Seattle metro area, a majority of adults never attend religious services, or go less than once a year, FYI Guy writes. But data reveals something else about WA that may be surprising.
A clear majority of adults in the Seattle area — around 64% — never attend church or religious services, or go less than once a year. That pencils out to about 1.98 million people out of the total 3.1 million population aged 18 and older in our metro area, which includes King, Pierce and Snohomish counties.
The survey includes data from all 50 states plus the nation’s 15 largest metro areas, including Seattle. And among those 15, Seattle ranked the least religious, edging out San Francisco, where 63% never attend religious services, or go less than once a year. Boston was a distant third at 56%.
What may be surprising to folks in the Seattle area, though, is that the rest of Washington is nearly as nonreligious as Seattle. Statewide, 63% never or almost never attend religious services, just 1 percentage point lower than the number for the Seattle area.
I'm doing my part!
If religion wanted to be adhered to, it wouldn’t fill itself with hate
And if it were true, it would be independently invented the same way in multiple places that were never in contact, rather than the hodgepodge of overlapping and contradictory claims we see today.
I miss my home 😭
It was an adopted home for me, but yeah, I feel your pain.
I miss it too. No other place has felt like home the way Seattle did.
You wouldn't think so from the amount of churches you see around, but I guess they feed the homeless and run preschools out of their basements more than they do actual preaching these days.
There's an old myth that Ballard used to require a church be constructed for every bar, and they really liked bars.
We have the 2nd most churches though too. It's a weird dichotomy. This is from 2015:
For example, Seattle has the second-highest number of religious institutions per capita, but a full one-third of its residents are unaffiliated. Seattle is behind only Portland in a ranking of cities based on residents with no religious affiliation from the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute, according to PropertyShark.
https://www.businessinsider.com/cities-with-most-churches-2015-6?op=1
I read that as churches working their hardest to get new converts, assuming that if they're unaffiliated that they're essentially religious free agents, which isn't how it works but bless their little hearts for trying.
They're the physical churches, but I've forgotten the story. There was some law and prohibition or something? They are/were every block in Ballard.
I never connected the observations but yeah I don't know anyone in the area who goes to church even there are a surprising number of them around. It's also pretty rare for me to see people entering or exiting a church at all whereas places I used to live would often have people around them. I wonder what the age demographic of the church goers is locally?
The people that I know who go to church, usually do it on the down low. I knew someone for 5 years and didn't know they were church goers. They knew we weren't so didn't really talk about it. Except for Jehovah's Witness, they're pretty relentless.
So much natural beauty in the area, most people would rather enjoy that than go to a lecture on their Sunday. Or maybe that's just me
I'm from the Seattle area, and that seems about right. Most of my friends were agnostic or uninterested, with a couple vehemently atheist. Even my religious friends were relative slackers, with most just going to Christmas and Easter mass or whatever the protestants call it.
I'm quite religious, but even I'm relatively chill about it compared to others in my religion. There must be something in the water up there.
Thank God!!
oh, wait
Sh-should I move there? Where I am even athiests are going along with the religious nuts because it "owns the libs"
Seattle is a leftist town, despite all the big corpos that employ a lot of us. And Washington is a fairly social democratic state, for somewhere in America, at least. It's pretty nice.
I'm so fucking lucky! It's awesome! Yeah Shelbyville! Eat all of our shorts!
Wait, so a full 36% attend at least one service a year? Where do they find these people?
One of the reasons I moved here, I love it
Lmao