How religious are your friends?

[Continential]

My friends are fairly standard American Christians.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Admittedly, one of the few things I like about Virginia and the South more than Connecticut and New England is that Christianity is the norm among both liberals and conservatives instead of empty secularism. I live in a majority black area, so even non-churchgoers are pretty devout in their own way. A friend of me and my mom joined us for church a few times, but we ended up leaving the parish because the priest was... bad news, I'll just say.

[Dr. MB]

Barely. I live in a place where religion is usually an afterthought and especially among the sort of people I hang out with. A lot of people grew up going to church but don’t really identify as Christian anymore. Also got a lot of Jewish friends but they’re not exactly hardcore about it.

[afleitch]

Almost non existent. Except my Muslim friends. All my friends were almost exclusively Catholic growing up and the same people are now non religious. Quite common where I am.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Most of my friends outside of church are not very religious, with a few exceptions.  This generally holds true whether they identify as Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Buddhist.

[2952-0-0]

One benefit of living in a demographically global city like Toronto is that the large majority of people have at least some religious affiliation, and every globally significant religious tradition will be represented in anyone's social circle. This means that aggressive in-your-face atheists will be looked upon with, at best, indifference, and by default, mild annoyance.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     My friends at work are pretty secular. Outside of work, they are overall very religious. Not out of a choice of mine to exclude secular people, but since I became a Christian I have overall interacted much less with irreligious people. I know it's a bad thing, but we just sort of grew apart.

[TheReckoning]

Pretty much all of them are irreligious, although a couple of them are loosely Christian, in that they believe in God and get some find some philosophy from Christianity, but don’t necessarily practice all of the commandments.

[DaleCooper]

About half of them are fake Christians and the other half don't claim to believe in anything spiritual.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It varies. Some of my friends are even more religious than I am, others are non- or antireligious. It depends on when I met them and what our shared interests are.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

My closest friends are not religious, although I believe some are more non-religious than others. I can't be sure for most of my friends defined more broadly but I have seen little indication any are religious. The exceptions tend to be people I've met online or ones I've met at church specifically.

[John Dule]

I've never met a religious person in real life and had any kind of a lengthy conversation with them. Maybe someday.

[HillGoose]

lmao "friends"

imagine

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Mostly non religious with a couple of Catholics and Anglicans. I enjoy chatting with those friends about religion (I mean, I post regularly on R&P for a reason ). One of my closer friends is a devout, fairly liberal Catholic convert, and our friendship has definitely grown closer through swapping sacred music recs and listening to them together.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

That fact that a majority of posters in this thread seem to have social circles that self-select for level of religiosity dismays me, but it doesn't exactly surprise me. People everywhere in this country are losing, not necessarily the ability, but the opportunity to know and love people who live differently from them.

[Vosem]

That fact that a majority of posters in this thread seem to have social circles that self-select for level of religiosity dismays me, but it doesn't exactly surprise me. People everywhere in this country are losing, not necessarily the ability, but the opportunity to know and love people who live differently from them.

I've twice allowed myself to be proselytized into congregations, for the record; my answer here would actually be 'varies strongly', though this was more true 5 years ago than it is now. (I have close friends that are really hardcore New Atheists, most friends that are vaguely religious but not in a way that affects their daily lives, rather like myself, and then some that actually are pretty strongly religious, though none belonging to a group that would actually meaningfully sever them from American culture; eg, none that wear religious dress.)

[Ferguson97]

Of my closest friend group:

Best friend: Some variant of Protestant, but is not particularly devout
Friend 2: Atheist
Friend 3: IDK
Friend 4: Some variant of Protestant, about as devout as the average American I guess

College friends:

Friend 1: Muslim, but not super devout
Friend 2: Jewish, not super religious but very into the cultural stuff
Friend 3: Catholic, semi-religious
Friend 4: Agnostic
Friend 5: Jewish, not at all devout
Friend 6: IDK

So I guess the most devout would be the Catholic?

[afleitch]

That fact that a majority of posters in this thread seem to have social circles that self-select for level of religiosity dismays me, but it doesn't exactly surprise me. People everywhere in this country are losing, not necessarily the ability, but the opportunity to know and love people who live differently from them.

It guess it depends where you are in the world. I have very few religious friends not through self selection, but because they lost their faith too. And making religious friends of a conservative, usually Christian, religious persuasion can be and is difficult because it's conditional.

For the same reason, where I live specifically, I'm more likely to be invited to Eid celebrations than Easter, so it impacts upon the sorts of friendships you start to make.

[Torie]

They aren't. Religion never comes up ever in fact, one way or the other, except last year for the blessing of the animals by the local Catholic Church in Hudson. Sad to say, I was in Hoboken.

[John Dule]

I've never met a religious person in real life and had any kind of a lengthy conversation with them. Maybe someday.

Correction: I did have a Protestant friend in high school, but he was a complete stoner moron who also believed in flat earth theory. So that has been the extent of my exposure to the American Christian community.

[Biden his time]

The friends I have who are Muslim are overwhelmingly very religious and observant (relative to American standards), are highly involved in the local community, and have a lot of religious knowledge (many even having forgone in-person secular schooling for periods of time to focus on hifz or other religious studies)

However, this isn't because the Muslims of South Florida are disproportionately religious. It's got more to do with the fact that the Muslim community here is relatively small, so nearly all the Muslims I know I met at the masjid first (at Sunday School or during Ramadan or after Friday prayers), and of course, those would tend to be more religious.

I don't meet many Muslims outside these networks really just because they're so rare (exacerbated since my parents didn't know many people when they moved to the area, so there aren't really uncles or aunts or other family connections). All throughout elementary and middle school I usually was the only Muslim kid in my grade level, and other friends of mine who went to different charter schools in the area have similar experiences.

As for my Non-Muslim friends, it's much more mixed, with a few religious Christians and a few atheists, but religion is mainly a private thing around here, and a lot of good friends I have I've never asked about their religion.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

My church has a massive young adults ministry, so I have a ton of friends from there.  And, most of my friends that don't go to my church are tangentially connected to it through church circles and the like.  So, basically all my friends I regularly interact with are church-going evangelical Christians.  I do interact with family workers and coworkers who aren't, but my friends mostly have similar religious (and political) beliefs to my own.

In the type of circles I interact with, the second question (after "what is your name") is typically "where do you go to church".

[Kleine Scheiße]

i try to keep a pretty diverse social circle

[Enduro]

i try to keep a pretty diverse social circle

I don't even try; the only thing I try to do socially is generally treat others with kindness and respect. Every kind of person responds to that, so the religious demographic of my friends ends up being very different