I'm back in the saddle after being out of town (and away from my DSL) for almost a week.  My inbox greeted me with the following headline:

Godless Hollywood? Bible Belt? New Research Exploring Faith in America’s Largest Markets Produces Surprises

And a surprise it was.  This new report by the Barna Group reveals some unexpected statistics, such as the 22% of Little Rock, Arkansas residents that met survey criteria for "evangelical Christian," the highest percentage of any U.S. city.  The cities with the lowest percentage of evangelicals were Salt Lake City, Hartford, and Providence.
Even more boggling is that Los Angeles has the largest population (though not the highest percentage) of evangelicals and "born agains" of any U.S. metropolitan area, contrary to stereotypes.  The state of Alabama seems to have the greatest proportion of evangelicals, Connecticut the least.

All the evidence points to a high proportion of evangelicals and "born agains" in the southern Mississippi River basin area; specifically the states of Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.  The polar opposites are northeast states such as Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island.  In Massachusetts, Connecticut and Washington, one out of every six adults are atheist or agnostic, double the national average.

It's an interesting pursuit to try to understand how this landscape of beliefs came to be.  In the Bible we find a similar situation of geographically influenced convictions when in Revelation Christ commends or rebukes the church of each city, based on their spiritual integrity, or lack of it. 

The Barna report was based on an astounding 24,000 interviews.  Interviewees were not asked to describe themselves as evangelical or born again; instead these terms were given to interviewees whose responses to a specified list of questions qualified them for the description.  You can get more details at the above link.