VENTURA, Calif. (WordNews.org) Jan. 23, 2013 – There’s no surprise that according to Barna Group’s latest survey, the South remains reigning champs in terms of being the most Bible-minded.
But if you thought New York City or Las Vegas would be fighting for the bottom of the list, you may be surprised.
Barna conducted 42,855 interviews nationwide in 96 of the largest cities in the country. The study, commissioned by the American Bible Society, looks at how people in those cities view the Bible.
Bible-minded, defined by Barna, refers to people who say they read the Bible every week, believe it is accurate in the principles it teaches and basically esteem it.
The top-ranking Bible-minded cities in the U.S. are:
* Knoxville, Tenn. (52 percent of the population are Bible-minded);
* Shreveport, La. (52 percent);
* Chattanooga, Tenn. (52 percent);
* Birmingham, Ala. (50 percent);
* Jackson, Miss. (50 percent);
* Springfield, Mo. (49 percent);
* Charlotte, N.C. (48 percent);
* Lynchburg, Va. (48 percent);
* Huntsville-Decatur, Ala. (48 percent);
* Charleston, W. Va. (47 percent).
Also not surprising, the North did not fare well, with Providence, R.I., and Albany, New York, fighting for the bottom slot.
In fact, Barna said Providence (9 percent) and Albany (10 percent) easy ranked as the lowest Bible-minded cities in the country. Barna described them as “the most extreme.”
“To put this in perspective, the most Bible-minded markets are five times more likely to have residents who qualify as Bible-minded than is true in these two Northeastern cities,” Barna said.
None of the remaining cities in the bottom 10 break 20 percent, where even one in five people could be considered Bible-minded. The New England area is home to most of the markets in the bottom 10 Bible-minded cities, including Burlington, Vt. (16 percent), Portland, Maine (16 percent), Hartford, Conn. (16 percent), Boston, Mass. (16 percent), Buffalo, N.Y. (18 percent) and New York, City (18 percent).
The remaining markets in the bottom 10 are primarily in the West and include San Francisco, CA (16 percent), Phoenix, Ariz. (17 percent), and Las Vegas (18 percent). Cedar Rapids, Iowa (18 percent) being something of an outlier.
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