Is Chattanooga losing its religious groove?
For four of the five years in the 2010s in which the American Bible Society, based on information collected by The Barna Group, ranked the country’s most “Bible-minded” cities, Chattanooga was No. 1. It also placed first in Barna’s list of “most churched” cities in 2017.
Now, newly released aggregated Barna data collected between 2005 and 2021 shows the city is tied for ninth in Bible reading and tied for 11th in weekly prayer.
In a country that is far more secular and humanistic than even 20 years ago, news that fewer people in the U.S. are reading the Bible and are praying less is hardly surprising.
But the actions seem to have fallen off faster in Chattanooga than elsewhere. Or have they?