In today's Times, Michael Pollack attempts to answer some people's questions about New York. And, given that it's Easter, most of them are of the religious nature. One reader writes, "Every now and then I hear the contention that New York City is more secular than the rest of the country. Just how religious is New York, anyway?" And the answer is—a lot! Sort of.
We may not be the religious zealots of the stereotypical Midwest, but the Encyclopedia of New York City counted 3,761 houses of worship for 49 principal faiths in 2009. Brooklyn was long known as the "City of Churches," and from where we're sitting we can see a mosque, a synagogue and a Catholic church. Jon Butler, professor of American studies at Yale, said that at least through the 1970s, “No other city exhibited such a remarkable combination of causes stimulating avid religious outreach, which belied the city’s reputation as the epitome of modern secularism."
New York also seems to attract the evangelical types, which Tony Carnes, a researcher and founder of the online journal A Journey Through NYC Religions, calls “like a Silicon Valley of church-planting." But it might not be working. In 2006 just 33 percent of New Yorkers said they attended church or synagogue every week, which isn't as bad as those heathens in New Hampshire (24 percent) but is still below the national average of 42 percent. And though you may be able to count congregants, nobody can count what a person actually believes...but they can count what a fool believes. Especially when it comes to nostalgic tales:
