Church a way of life in Dixie

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Southern folks seem to have a monopoly on that good old time religion.

The South contains eight of the top 10 states with the most frequent churchgoers in the nation, according to a Gallup Poll analysis of more than 68,000 interviews conducted in the past two years.

"That's no surprise," said Southern historian Eugene Genovese. "Before the Civil War, it'd be hard to say the South was churchgoing, but certainly in the 20th century, churchgoing has remained much stronger here, as has Christian orthodoxy."

It is a close race in the South.

With 58 percent saying they attend religious services once a week or almost every week, Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina residents are tied in first place -- followed by Mississippi at 57 percent, Arkansas and Utah tied at 55 percent, North Carolina and Nebraska tied at 53 percent and Tennessee and Georgia tied at 52 percent.

The national average is 42 percent. There is a wide range between the highest and lowest numbers, however -- a difference of 34 percentage points between the top three and bottom two states.

"There's a way in which churchgoing is woven into the fabric of life," said Wilfred McClay, an evangelical Anglican and a humanities professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. "When you move down here, one of the first things people ask is 'Where do you go to church?' In parts of the South, you still feel you're in a kind of Christendom.

"Plus the red state/blue state divide is not as pronounced here. There are blue-state people here who are strong churchgoers. This is a world where the normative assumptions are Christian and evangelical."

Of the Southern states, Virginia has the second lowest reported church attendance rate (44 percent), which is still above the national average, according to Gallup analyst Frank Newport.

Such findings are supported elsewhere. Church and churchgoing is at the very heart of the traditional South.