But the proportion of New Yorkers who affirmed a more rigorous set of doctrinal beliefs – such as the literal truth of the Bible and the existence of Satan – dropped from 4 to 1 percent in that time

Some surprising poll results are showing New Yorkers to be relatively more church-going and more Christian than they were a decade ago, but fewer of its Christians are strictly doctrinaire than the tiny minority that were already.

And while the results were issued on the cusp of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, it’s not clear that the attacks themselves drove the long-term trends as opposed to other factors, such as the financial crisis or the influx of (generally more religious) immigrants.

Still, the results defy the image of New York as a secular place whose main deity, if any, is the graven image of a bull on Wall Street…

Reported weekly worship attendance has grown from 31 to 46 percent in the New York metropolitan area since 1999; Bible reading is up six points to 35 percent; and the level of “unchurched” people, who do not worship regularly anywhere, has dropped eight points to 34 percent, according to results.

Sixty-one percent of New Yorkers said religion was very important in their lives — a figure that’s bumped up, down and up again since 9/11, and which compares with 72 percent nationally…

Thirty-two percent of New Yorkers say they’ve made a commitment to Jesus Christ, up from 20 percent in the late 1990s…

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