Most Connecticut adults, according to the data, are not bound to the precepts of organized religion.
Connecticut is one of the least religious states in the country, according to the latest Pew Religious Landscape Study.
Connecticut was the 47th most religious state, while Alabama and Mississippi topped the list.
According to the study, 54 percent of adults in Connecticut say they believe in God, compared to 82 percent of Alabama residents. Twenty-eight percent of Nutmeggers say they attend religious services regularly.
Only 21 percent believe that the word of God in scripture should be taken literally.
"They're much more vague or abstract or laid back in their religious approach," said David Roozen, a retired professor of religion and society at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. "It's not the kind of personal relationship, strong sense of God as rule giver, it's much more of a spirituality, a belief in the transcendent, without a lot of specifics."
The Pew study suggests Roozen may be right.
Fifty percent of Connecticut adults say they feel a sense of spiritual peace and well-being at least once a week. Forty-one percent say they feel a weekly sense of wonder about the universe, while 38 percent meditate once a week, and a whopping 70 percent say they believe in a heaven.
But the data make it clear that most Connecticut adults are not bound to the precepts of organized religion. Sixty-one percent say they never read scripture, and 53 percent say common sense is their guide on what is right or wrong, compared to 20 percent who say religion is their source. And 68 percent do not believe there are clear standards for what is is right and wrong. They believe it depends on the situation.
David Roozen said history plays a role in Connecticut's cynicism about organized religion.
"The pilgrims, which later became the congregationalists, were very anti-institutional," Roozen said. "Then there's historically what we would now call old-line Protestantism, liberal Protestantism, with later a heavy infusion of Roman Catholic."
It's an amalgam of faiths that Roozen said does not view religion in the same way that Alabama does -- a state where almost half of its citizens are evangelical Christians.
