The Nashua-Manchester area and its urban counterparts in Vermont and Maine are the least religious metropolitan regions in the country, according to a Gallup poll that confirms New England’s long-standing status as the least church-going part of the country.

The poll said that just 22 percent of people contacted in Nashua-Manchester region considered themselves “very religious,” the same tally reported in greater Portland, Maine. Only Burlington, Vt., and Boulder, Colo., at 17 percent each, had lower figures.

Those numbers are far below the national average of 40 percent counted as “very religious,” and New England, and particularly northern New England, has been at the bottom of the Gallup polls measuring religious affiliation for decades.

The data would come as no surprise to the Nashua Planning Board, which at a
January meeting, grappled with the severe traffic impacts of a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru planned for Main Dunstable Road, but later approved a Hindu temple on busy Broad Street, partly because it promised to cause few traffic headaches.

“Most churches throughout this community, unfortunately in today’s day and age, they’re low-impact,” Planning Board Chairman Ken Dufour said in January.

The survey covered 189 U.S. metropolitan areas in 2012. The Nashua-Manchester area includes most of Hillsborough County. The area’s tallies were based on 478 survey responses over landline or cell phones in the course of last year.

Gallup classified people as “very religious” if they said religion is an important part of their daily life and that they attend religious services every week or almost every week.

It also classified people as “moderately religious” if they said religion is important in their lives but that they do not attend services regularly, or that religion is not important but that they still attend services, and “nonreligious” if they said religion is not an important part of their daily life and that they seldom or never attend religious services.

Almost exactly half of the people in the Nashua-Manchester statistical area were classified as “nonreligious.”

By far the highest percentage of nonreligious people in any region were in Burlington, Vt., where almost two-thirds of respondents were classified that way.

The survey, released Tuesday, found enormous differences around the country, with many southern metro areas reporting “very religious” tallies of 50 percent or higher.

Provo, Utah, the home of the Mormon church, had the highest tally at 77 percent.

Of major cities, San Francisco, at 24 percent, and Greater Boston including Cambridge, Mass., at 25 percent, had the lowest “very religious” tallies.

To see the results of the survey, visit www.gallup.com/poll/161543/provo-orem-utah-religious-metro-area.aspx#1.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashuatelegraph.com. Also, follow Brooks on Twitter (@Telegraph_DaveB). Maryalice Gill contributed to this report.