US Cities With Most Churches Per Capita Aren’t Quite What You’d Expect

Just because a city has a lot of churches doesn’t necessarily mean it has a lot of religious citizens.

That’s what property research website PropertyShark found in a recent study of buildings designated “for religious use” in cities around the US.

For example, Seattle has the second-highest number of religious institutions per capita, but a full one-third of its residents are unaffiliated. Seattle is behind only Portland in a ranking of cities based on residents with no religious affiliation from the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute, according to PropertyShark.

San Francisco and Phoenix also had relatively high numbers of religious institutions per capita, and relatively few residents who associated themselves with a religion.

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