South Still Religious Bastion, Poll Shows
The South remains a religious bastion where nearly everyone believes in God and almost half think prayer heals, according to a poll conducted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
According to the poll, 88% of Southerners believe in God, compared with 78% of other Americans. Ninety percent of Southerners believe in answered prayers, compared with 80% of non-Southerners. And 46% of Southerners believe they have been healed by prayer, compared with 28% of others.
Both groups polled reject the notion of ghosts, reincarnation and astrology’s role in their future. Equal numbers, roughly 60%, believe in ESP, or extrasensory perception.
The poll was conducted in the spring by the university’s Institute for Research in Social Science. It is based on telephone interviews with 844 adults in 12 Southern states and 413 adults in the other states and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points for Southerners and 5 percentage points for others.
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