Godless Wednesday: Top 10 "Bible-Minded" Cities

A report from the Barna Group has a list of the most "Bible-minded" cities in America. If my city was described as Bible-minded I would take it as an insult. The definition used by the report (which was commissioned by the American Bible Society) is "individuals who report reading the Bible in a typical week and who strongly assert the Bible is accurate in the principles it teaches are considered to be Bible-minded."

The Top 10 urban markets with the highest percentages of people who are "Bible-minded" are:

1. Knoxville, TN (52%)
2. Shreveport, LA (52%)
3. Chattanooga, TN (52%)
4. Birmingham, AL (50%)
5. Jackson, MS (55%)
6. Springfield, MO (49%)
7. Charlotte, NC (48%)
8. Lynchburg, VA (48%)
9. Huntsville-Decatur, AL (48%)
10. Charleston, WV (47%)

Unsurprisingly, I have only visited one of these cities (Charlotte for a mathematics conference way back in the mid 1990s). All of these cities are in the South and are considered red states.

Of course, here at Godless Wednesday we are more interested in the least Bible-minded cities, and those are:

1. Providence, RI (9%)
2. Albany/Schenectady/Troy, NY (10%)
3. Burlington, VT (16%)
4. New Haven/Hartford, CT (16%)
5. Portland, ME (16%)
6. Boston, MA/Manchester, NH (16%
7. San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, CA (16%)
8. Phoenix AZ (17%)
9. Cedar Rapids, IA (18%)
10. Buffalo, NY (18%)

Interestingly, also tied a 18% are Las Vegas, NV and New York, NY with Salt Lake City, UT coming in at 19%. Let's see, I have been in Providence twice, most recently just a few months ago in November 2012. I spent eight years in the "Capital District" of Albany/Schenectady/Troy as an adult going to college (and earning three degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). Of the top 10 I have only not been to Cedar Rapids and Burlington.