Regions of Mind has an interesting series of maps posted with lay out the degree of religious adherence based on percentage of population as reported to the Census by counties throughout the U.S. Following the conglomerate map are several others that break it down by religion. Pretty interesting stuff. Michigan, for instance, is mildly religious in the lower peninsula (although some would disagree) and in that sense is similar to Washington. Of course, there are problems with gaining this data from the Census, but I suspect the margin of error is fairly low. FWIW, I live in a country with very low adherence, which is fitting for an atheist.
From an editorial in the Texas Observer, 4/7/2006 (hat tip to Rox):
Consider all that we’ve lived through in the past few years. We’ve got an administration that lied its way to a never-ending war in Iraq (and a wimpy Congress that went along with it); that talks about promoting democracy around the world as it engages in and outsources torture; that collectively went shoe-shopping as Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. We’ve got a military budget that tops more than $500 billion a year; an economic policy best described as Whatever You Do, Don’t Tax the Super-Rich; and a ratio of CEO to average-worker pay that puts us right up there with countries we snidely refer to as “Banana Republics.” What else? Oh, yes. We’ve got a brand new domestic spy program, can’t forget that. As James Risen, a New York Times reporter and author of State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, has written, the Bush presidency “has been the first in modern history in which the Pentagon served as the overwhelming center of gravity for U.S. foreign policy.” In other words, “One of the most lasting and damaging legacies of the Bush administration is the militarization of American intelligence.” (In some circles, that’s what’s known as a golpe de estado or coup d’etat.)
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