Unchurched Belt

The term was first applied to the West Coast of the United States in 1985 by Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, who found that California, Oregon, and Washington had the lowest church membership rates in the U.S. in 1971, and that there was little change in this pattern between 1971 and 1980.

[1] As of 2000[update], the six states and provinces reported to have the lowest rate of religious adherence in North America were Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Nevada, and West Virginia.

[7] A 2011 Gallup poll showed that when it came to the number of people seeing religion as important in everyday life, New Hampshire and Vermont were the least religious, both with 23%, followed by 25% in Maine.

[8] There has been debate as to whether the Western United States is still the most irreligious part of the U.S., due to New England surpassing it as the region with the highest percentage of residents unaffiliated with any religion.

[12] By 2020, it appeared that the Bible Belt was shrinking, and each year more states were reporting a higher level of non-participation in religion.

Most common religious affiliations (or lack thereof) in the 48 contiguous U.S. states, based on the American Religious Identification Survey in 2001. States in gray have "no religion" as the most common affiliation.