There are now 23 states where the largest religious group is “unaffiliated” — a testament, perhaps, to what many researchers describe as a changing religious landscape in the United States.
Public Religion Research Institute captured many of these shifts in its American Values Atlas, which it released on Wednesday. The atlas features demographic, religious and political data based on surveys conducted throughout 2014.
“The U.S. religious landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation that is fundamentally reshaping American politics and culture,” PRRI Director of Research Dan Cox told The Huffington Post.
Beyond the 23 states with the largest religiously unaffiliated populations, there are 15 states where the second-largest religious group is religiously unaffiliated. Some states have multiple religious affiliations that share the position of largest or second-largest group. That includes Wisconsin, where the largest religious groups are made up of white Catholics (22 percent), the unaffiliated (22 percent) and white mainline Protestants (22 percent).
Click through the slideshow below to see the biggest religious groups in each state:
White evangelical Protestant (39%) Second largest: Black Protestant (20%)
Unaffiliated (28%) Second largest: White evangelical Protestant (15%)
Unaffiliated (25%) Second largest: Hispanic Catholic (16%)
White evangelical Protestant (39%) Second largest: White mainline Protestant (14%)
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White evangelical Protestant (19%) Second largest: Unaffiliated (18%) and Hispanic Catholic (18%)
Mormon (56%) Second largest: Unaffiliated (20%)
Unaffiliated (32%) Second largest: White Catholic (17%) and White mainline Protestant (17%)
White evangelical Protestant (21%) and Unaffiliated (21%) Second largest: White mainline Protestant (16%)
Unaffiliated (33%) Second largest: White evangelical Protestant (16%)
White evangelical Protestant (40%) Second largest: Unaffiliated (21%)
White Catholic (22%), Unaffiliated (22%) and White mainline Protestant (22%) Second largest: White evangelical Protestant (16%)
White evangelical Protestant (32%) Second largest: Unaffiliated (22%)
