A new comparative analysis of states’ religiousness published this week by the Pew Research Center shows Alaska is the 35th most religious state in the country.
The survey found 26% of Alaskans in Pew’s Religious Landscape Study are considered “highly religious,” based on questions asking whether they believe in God, pray regularly, attend religious services, and consider religion to be important.
The survey, perhaps the highest-quality long-term study of religion in the United States, was conducted in 2023 and 2024, with initial results published in February; Pew released a state-by-state comparison this week.
Chip Rotolo was the main author of the new state-level data analysis. By phone on Wednesday, he said that 40% of Alaskans now say they seldom or never pray.
“That’s up 10 points from 2014 (the most recent prior Pew study). That’s statistically significant. The share of those who say religion is not too important or not at all important, it’s 43%. That’s up 13 points from 10 years ago, so also significant.”
Mississippi was considered the No. 1 most-religious state, with Vermont finishing 51st, last among the states and the District of Columbia.
Among states that voted for Donald Trump in 2024, only Iowa (tied for 43rd) and Nevada (tied for 46th) were less religious than Alaska.
Alaska was the most religious state bordering the Pacific Ocean. Washington (tied for 37th), Oregon (tied for 46th), California (39rd) and Hawaii (tied for 43rd) are all less religious than Alaska.
Pew previously conducted the Religious Landscape Study in 2014 and 2007, and the results show a downward trend in religiousness within Alaska. In the latest survey, 33% of Alaskans identified as religiously unaffiliated, while 56% said they identified as Christian. In 2014, 62% of respondents identified as Christian and 31% identified as religiously unaffiliated.
Two percent of Alaskans identified as “Pagan or Wiccan,” with 1% identifying as Jewish and 1% identifying as Buddhist, the largest non-Christian religious groups.
Fifteen percent of respondents identified as Catholic, and 26% as some type of evangelical Protestant.
Nationally, the share of Americans who identify as Christian has dropped since 2007, but the decline leveled off starting in 2020, according to Pew data. In the latest survey, 62% of Americans said they identify as Christian, and 29% identified as unaffiliated.
“Generally,” Rotolo said, “what we see in Alaska parallels very closely what we see at the national level.”
Spirituality — the belief in a soul or spirit — hasn’t declined as much. Eighty-six percent of Alaskans said they believe in a soul. Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Kansas and Virginia, among other states, reported the same level of belief.
“I think in general, Alaska falls in a pretty similar space on the spiritual measures that it does on the religion (measures), which is … if you broke the United States into thirds, two-thirds would be more spiritual and one-third would be less spiritual,” Rotolo said.
Limited public polling is available on religion in the United States. The U.S. Census Bureau is legally forbidden from asking about religion during the once-per-decade Census and doesn’t regularly ask religion-related questions during the surveys it conducts between Censuses.
The Public Religion Research Institute conducts annual religious censuses down to the county level, but its sample size is smaller than the Pew study and thus has a larger margin of error.
In 2024, its survey — based on just 51 people in Alaska — estimated that 26% of the state had no religious affiliation, below its national average of 28%.
Its 2023 survey estimated that Anchorage had one of the highest proportions of non-Christian residents anywhere in the country.
Several public opinion survey companies active in Alaska said they don’t typically ask about religion. Data for Progress said it asked about religion in a spring 2024 survey; of 1,120 respondents, 29% said they were not religious and another 12% said “none of the above.” Fifty-two percent of respondents identified themselves as some kind of Christian.
Ivan Moore, who operates Anchorage-based Alaska Survey Research, said he did include questions about religion in a survey conducted this summer.
That survey found 41 percent of respondents identified themselves as atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular.” Forty-three percent of respondents said they do not consider themselves actively religious. Approximately one-third of Alaska adults selected a religious affiliation and said they were actively religious, Moore said.
Looking ahead, Rotolo said, he’s interested to know whether there is indeed a revival of religiousness among younger Americans.
“Most of our demographic data suggests we will see more religious decline,” he said, but since the COVID pandemic, the share of Americans who identify as Christian has stabilized.
“That stability story right now is still really interesting,” he said.
Rotolo also noted that historically, “women have been quite a lot more religious than men on all of those core measures we tend to look at.”
That’s begun to change.
“Among young men and women, those born in the 2000s, those born in the 1990s, the gap between men and women is almost gone, and on some measures, is gone,” he said, in large part because large numbers of young women are leaving religion.