Mississippi deemed most religious state

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- Mississippi is the most religious U.S. state by several measurements used in a survey by The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The survey released Monday indicated Mississippi leads the nation when it comes to the importance of religion in people's lives, frequency of attendance at worship services, frequency of prayer and absolute certainty of belief in God.

Some 82 percent of Mississippians said religion is very important in their lives (56 percent was the national average), 60 percent said they attend religious services at least once per week (39 percent average), 77 percent said they prayed frequently (58 percent) and 91 percent said they believed in God (71 percent).

Several other Southern states also rank very high on the religion measures, the researchers said. For instance, under importance of religion in people's lives, Alabama was second, in frequency of prayer, Louisiana was second.

Utah was second under attendance of religious services.

The data was collected as part of Pew's 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, which interviewed 35,556 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of 0.6 percentage points.