“Practicing Christians” are defined as those who identify as Christian; who have attended a religious worship service at least once in the past month; and who say their religious faith is very important in their life.

There is little debate that most Americans are faith-oriented people. Yet how does spirituality and religion differ from one city to the next?

A Barna Group study of regional and city-level expressions of faith both confirms and rejects many popular stereotypes about faith and religion in America. The findings – drawn from a newly released pair of reports from Barna Group, titled Markets 2011 and States 2011 – are based on nearly 40,000 interviews conducted over the last seven years by Barna Group.

Christian Identity
The cities (measured in the Barna research as media markets) with the highest proportion of residents who describe themselves as Christian are typically in the South, including: Shreveport (98%), Birmingham (96%), Charlotte (96%), Nashville (95%), Greenville, SC / Asheville, NC (94%), New Orleans (94%), Indianapolis (93%), Lexington (93%), Roanoke-Lynchburg (93%), Little Rock (92%), and Memphis (92%).

The lowest share of self-identified Christians inhabited the following markets: San Francisco (68%), Portland, Oregon (71%), Portland, Maine (72%), Seattle (73%), Sacramento (73%), New York (73%), San Diego (75%), Los Angeles (75%), Boston (76%), Phoenix (78%), Miami (78%), Las Vegas (78%), and Denver (78%). Even in these cities, however, roughly three out of every four residents align with Christianity.

Read a brief interview with David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, about how these powerful new reports can be put to use for your organization.

Read More: http://www.barna.org/faith-spirituality/435-diversity-of-faith-in-various-us-cities

[Editor’s note: The original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid, so the links have been removed.]