Most people don't talk about it ...and though they expect to hear about it in church, that is the only place they want the subject to come up.

The number of people in the United States who go to church on a regular basis was much higher in years past ...but more recently polled around 40%.

Other studies have polled it at less than half that amount ...due to what is called the 'halo effect'.

Americans tend to over-report socially desirable behavior like voting and attending church and under-report socially undesirable behavior like drinking. ---this tendency referred to as the 'halo effect'.

Also, aside from not reporting accurately because of a feeling of not wanting to admit it ...even among those who accurately report they go to church, it may be somewhat of a 'halo effect' why they do go.

And there is always the sense of doing what most everyone else is doing.  Utah is the state in our country where there is the most church attendance reported.

Tennessee and south, not including Florida ...but as far as Texas, reports the next highest church attendance.

The lowest percentage of attendance is the northeast part of our country, including the District of Columbia ...and also the northwest part of our nation.

This is not to show that one part of our nation has better people than another ...it merely shows the effect of grouping, whether there are political reasons, social reasons, or economic influences.

And there are also different types of churches that more effectively grow in certain areas.  A megachurch is usually defined as having two thousand or more for weekend attendance.  Protestant churches have well over a thousand listed megachurches, while more than twice as many Catholic churches report to have attendance at that level, though they don't consider themselves as megachurches.

Curiously enough, it is said that many of these church denominations have decreasing numbers overall nationally, though nondenominational churches seem to be growing.  Of course, a study is only perceived to be perhaps as reliable as what a particular group would want to believe, and to the extent any poll or study could accurately not be swayed by that unintentional bias.

One may ask, why say anything at all about it ...if I am then going to just downplay what is being said.  Well, you'd have a good point there.  I guess, I thought I'd just restate what you've probably already heard, before I attempt to add something different.  It seems safer to begin on familiar ground ...before I'm accused of kicking familiar dirt in anyone's face.