Among the 34 largest U.S. metro areas surveyed, the Portland-Vancouver region stands out as the only place where nonreligious people outnumber Christians, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study.
Surveying more than 35,000 Americans across all 50 states, the study provides a detailed analysis of religious affiliation and spiritual practices nationwide.
“The study was designed to capture people’s religious identity, their beliefs and practices, as well as things related to their spiritual beliefs and practices and experiences,” said Becka Alper, a senior researcher at Pew Research Center. “We wanted to get a really broad assessment of that, and that’s in part because U.S. Census data doesn’t ask about religion.”
According to Pew’s findings, 44% of adults in the Portland-Vancouver metro area identify as religiously unaffiliated, while 42% identify as Christian. An additional 13% belong to other religions.
Among the religiously unaffiliated, 10% identify as atheist, 14% as agnostic and 20% as “nothing in particular.”
This regional trend mirrors Oregon’s broader religious landscape, where the number of Christians and nonreligious people is about the same, 43%.
“In Portland, specifically those numbers, they’re technically different,” Alper said. “But because of the size of the samples of those groups, that’s not really actually meaningfully different. And so people in Portland broadly look fairly similar to people who live in the state of Oregon overall.”
The 2023-24 version of the survey marks the first time there was enough data in the Portland-Vancouver metro area to include findings in the report, Alper said. The survey, which was previously conducted in 2007 and 2014, tracks national religious trends over time.
Oregon’s data shows a sharp decline in Christian affiliation, which was 67% in 2007, 61% in 2014 and 43% in 2023-24.
Among all metro areas surveyed in the most recent study, Portland and Seattle tied as the least religious in the U.S., with 44% of adults in both cities identifying as religiously unaffiliated.
Oregon as a whole diverges significantly from national trends. Across the U.S., 62% of adults identify as Christian, 29% as religiously unaffiliated and 7% as belonging to other religions. Beyond religious affiliation, Oregonians also report lower levels of religious practice compared with the national average.
“Oregonians, it’s not just identity, like they’re less likely to affiliate with a religion, but they’re also less likely to say they pray daily,” Alper said. “So 29% of Oregonians say this, compared to 44% of all U.S. adults. They’re less likely to say they believe in God or a universal spirit with absolute certainty, 41% in Oregon compared to 54% among the public overall. They’re less likely to say they attend religious services on a monthly basis in person, it’s 20% in Oregon compared to 33%.”
Overall, Oregonians are less religious than the national average, with only 41% identifying as very or somewhat religious—16 percentage points lower than the U.S. average of 57%.
However, when it comes to spirituality, the gap is narrower: 67% of Oregonians consider themselves very or somewhat spiritual, compared to 74% of Americans nationwide. Both questions use mirrored language, asking survey respondents to what extent they consider themselves a spiritual/religious person.
“We see that spiritual beliefs are widespread, whereas more traditional measures of religious belief in practice are a bit lower,” Alper said. “What we’re picking up in the surveys that you know people kind of believe or experience at different rates when you’re talking about spirituality specifically, versus traditional measures of religion.”
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