When did Boston/Massachusetts become as irreligious as the West Coast?

[King of Kensington]

According to Pew religious landscape study, people with no religion outnumber Catholics in metro Boston.  The share with no religion (34%) is closer to San Francisco and Seattle than NYC or Philadelphia in spite of it being in the same region and more similar "white ethnic" composition.  Massachusetts comes out a lot more nonreligious (32%) than Rhode Island and Connecticut.

https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/

Was it the Catholic Church scandals?  Just the high education and cultural liberalism of the area?

[avishwanath28]

According to Pew religious landscape study, people with no religion outnumber Catholics in metro Boston.  The share with no religion (34%) is closer to San Francisco and Seattle than NYC or Philadelphia in spite of it being in the same region and more similar "white ethnic" composition.  Massachusetts comes out a lot more nonreligious (32%) than Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Was it the Catholic Church scandals?  Just the high education and cultural liberalism of the area?

The latter, I think. You're getting a lot of high education migrants too (both international and domestic) to the area as well, which you're less likely to be getting in Providence, say.

[King of Kensington]

Catholic

Rhode Island  42%
Massachusetts  34%
Connecticut  33%
New Hampshire  26%
Vermont  22%
Maine  21%

Protestant

Maine  37%
Connecticut  35%
New Hampshire  30%
Vermont  30%
Rhode Island  30%
Massachusetts  21%

Religious nones

Vermont  37%
New Hamsphire  36%
Massachusetts  32%
Maine  31%
Connecticut  23%
Rhode Island  20%

[H. Ross Peron]

Seems like a big part is a collapse in religious id among Protestant Yankees.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

I've heard that the Archdiocese of Boston scandal in 2002 was actually quite significant to this.

I'm surprised that 30% of Rhode Island is Protestant by the way. Really puts things in perspective re: most Catholic state.

[King of Kensington]

According to Pew, Boston metro was down to 29% Catholic.  Boston was long thought of as America's most Catholic city.

[pikachu]

I think Mung Beans and avishwanath are both right, but to add to that, the Boston metro also has a pretty low black+Latino population compared to its Northern peers. Boston is at 20% compared to NYC and DC at 41%, Chicago at 39%, and Philly at 30%. So you have a lot of secularizing white Protestants with not as many more religious minorities to pick up some slack.

[King of Kensington]

NHW Catholic:

Boston  24%
Chicago  22%
Philadelphia  22%
New York  19%

Given how much whiter Boston is, I would expect Catholic "roots" would be well ahead of the others, so it looks like the drop-off happened on the Catholic (esp. Irish-Catholic?) as well as on the WASP/Yankee side.

[King of Kensington]

Seems like a big part is a collapse in religious id among Protestant Yankees.

Indeed, though Massachusetts looks more like rural Yankee northern New England than Connecticut and Rhode Island in its share of "religious nones."

Also surprised that the Protestant population is as high as it is in CT/RI.

Connecticut and Rhode Island seem to be less "culturally liberal" than Mass/VT/NH

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

The sex abuse scandals are a huge part of it. I've been a Boston-area Catholic and I can confirm from experience that it's practically all lots of current and former Catholics in the area can talk about--understandably so, given how overinflated many Bostonians' perceptions of the Church were beforehand and thus how disillusioning the scandal was! If the Spotlight investigation had been somewhere other than Boston, Massachusetts today would probably still look a lot more like Rhode Island in terms of religious profile than like Upper New England.

[King of Kensington]

NHW Catholic:

Boston  24%
Chicago  22%
Philadelphia  22%
New York  19%

% of NHWs that are Catholic:

Chicago  41%
New York  40%
Philadelphia  35%
Boston  33%