This story appears as part of a collaboration to strengthen investigative journalism in Maine between the BDN and The Maine Monitor. Read more about the partnership.
In 2021, a year after moving back to Maine, Dover-Foxcroft resident Camilla Norsworthy went to get a massage.
She’d felt tense from the physicality of her job upholstering everything from furniture to boat interiors. The masseuse she went to also practiced Reiki, a Japanese healing technique that involves channeling energy flow in the body, and at Norsworthy’s second appointment, the masseuse incorporated energy work into the session. The experience was transformative for Norsworthy, who is now a Level 3 certified Reiki practitioner and launched her own practice in September 2024.
Norsworthy grew up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but never felt connected to the Mormon faith. She has tried other religions since then, but none have felt right.
Through Reiki, she discovered a kind of spirituality distinct from an organized religion. She was initially hesitant to call herself spiritual, but as she began to rethink her beliefs on energy points in the body and her relationship to the world, the label felt right.
When the Pew Research Center asked Mainers in 2023 and 2024 what religions they followed, the most common answer wasn’t Catholicism or Evangelical Protestantism. It was “nothing in particular.”
Maine consistently ranks as one of the least religious states in the nation. The state ranked 49th in a recent ranking of overall religiosity by the Pew Research Center, joining New Hampshire and Vermont in the bottom three. Two in 5 Maine adults said they didn’t identify with any faith at all.
Other studies have found that Maine ranks slightly higher when it comes to measures of spirituality, but still on the lower end of the spectrum nationwide.
In five graphs, The Maine Monitor has analyzed what recent data on religion and spirituality reveal about the state.
‘Nothing in particular’ surpasses religious traditions in Maine
Maine is one of the least religious states in the nation, with its share of Christians falling faster than the national average.
Just over half of Mainers identify as Christians, while a quarter identify as “nothing in particular” and 14% identify as atheist or agnostic. Another 9% identify with other religions, with the largest shares being Pagan or Wiccan and Buddhist, according to the most recent Pew survey.
Catholics and mainline Protestants have seen the sharpest decline in affiliation since Pew’s 2007 Religious Landscape Survey. In the most recent survey, more respondents identified as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular than the two Christian sects combined.
Roughly 1 in 5 Mainers now identify as evangelical Protestants — up from previous surveys. The growth comes as conservative churches and denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention have gained footholds and become increasingly popular across the state.
According to other studies, the share of Mainers who don’t identify with any particular religion could surpass 50%. What it means to be unaffiliated varies from person to person.
The Nones Project, a research effort to describe non-religious Americans, or “nones,” has found a wide variability in religiously unaffiliated Americans’ beliefs. The project categorizes non-religious Americans into four groups: Nones in Name Only (NiNOs), disengageds, zealous secularists and spiritual but not religious (SBNR), the largest share.
Spiritual but not religious people, who make up 36%t of the religiously unaffiliated, rank religion as unimportant but spirituality as important. Most don’t trust religion and seldom or never pray, but they are more likely than religious adults to believe animals and other parts of nature have spirits or spiritual energies.
People who mark “nothing in particular” as their religion may still act religious, The Nones Project found. NiNOs, who make up 21% of nones, still say religion is relatively important. Nearly half believe in God “without a doubt,” and a third attend religious services at least once a year.
Mainers rank low when it comes to religious metrics, slightly higher on spirituality
In three out of four religious metrics from Pew’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, which included the District of Columbia, Maine ranked in 48th or 49th out of 51.
One in 5 Maine adults attend religious services at least monthly, and just under a quarter say religion is very important in their lives.
A third of Mainers say they pray daily. On that metric, the state ranked 44th.
Those who don’t follow a particular religion may still hold spiritual beliefs. An analysis of Pew’s 2023 American Trends Panel found that nearly half of all religious nones still consider themselves spiritual or say spirituality is very important in their lives.
Maine still ranks low on seven metrics measuring spirituality, but notably higher than on religiosity metrics. The vast majority of Mainers believe people have souls or spirits, and three quarters believe in something spiritual beyond the natural world.
Maine came in 38th for its residents’ likelihood to do spiritual activities — visiting a nature spot, listening to music, exercising, looking inward, practicing yoga or meditating for spiritual reasons — at least once a week, its highest ranking on any metric.
The state still ranked near the bottom on metrics like “feeling a deep sense of spiritual peace and well-being” and feeling “the presence of something from beyond this world” at least weekly.
Adherence rates differ from religious identity
Every 10 years, the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies completes the U.S. Religion Census. The study provides a county-by-county look at religious adherents — people with affiliations to specific congregations — reported by religious groups or estimated through statistical analysis.
As with Pew’s surveys, the U.S. Religion Census shows that Catholicism and mainline Protestantism in Maine have declined from their peaks decades ago. Evangelical Protestant churches, meanwhile, reported double the adherents in 2020 as in 2000. Latter-day Saints and Jehovah’s Witnesses have also grown.
Muslim adherents, who weren’t included in the religion census prior to 2000, grew from less than 1 adherent per 1,000 Mainers to roughly 12 adherents per 1,000 Mainers in 2020.
Scott Thumma, a professor of sociology of religion at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace in Connecticut, helped guide the 2020 version of the U.S. Religion Census. Like all data on religion, he said it paints an incomplete picture, but by relying on congregations instead of individuals for its data, the census provides a floor for the number of people actually affiliated with specific congregations in each county.
Using the religion census to compare county trends over time is most accurate for 2010 and 2020, Thumma said. Fewer denominations participated in earlier decades, so trends over time are approximate.
New England has historically had large contingents of Catholics and mainline Protestants. Part of why the region is one of the least religious in the country now, Thumma said, is that those traditions have aging congregations, while the evangelical faiths that are growing nationally are concentrated in other parts of the country. Evangelical groups including the Southern Baptist Convention have grown in Maine in the past couple decades, though, in part due to intentional church planting efforts, Thumma said.
The most recent religion census counted just over 30% of Mainers as religious adherents — lower than every state except New Hampshire. That means nearly 70% of Mainers “haven’t been claimed” by a specific religious organization, Thumma said. “Some of those people probably are religious,” he explained, “but they don’t ever show up in a church.”
Others among that 70% may intentionally avoid organized religion or identify as spiritual, Thumma said, but those groups aren’t captured in the census. The increase in nones is especially prominent in younger generations that have grown up since the 1990s, Thumma said.
“What we’re seeing, whether with the nones or just with the spiritual but not religious, younger generations are relating to the divine or some otherness than just humanity in a variety of ways that don’t all align with traditional religious methods and modes,” he said.
Despite the religious decline of the past couple decades, a recent analysis by Pew Research found that the falloff has slowed nationally since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Conservative Christian organizations have pointed to a religious revival among young Americans, particularly in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, though Pew’s most recent report found “no clear evidence” of a “nationwide religious resurgence” in the data.
To Norsworthy, the Reiki practitioner in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine is “ripe” with people looking for alternative forms of meaning and community outside organized religion. She has connected with many of her Reiki clients online, where she says her posts about spirituality can reach thousands of people.
This past summer, Norsworthy held three different spiritual events, including a learning session about Reiki, a sound bath and an event with a tarot card reader and a medium, garnering crowds of a half dozen to a dozen people — not many, she said, but a lot for rural Maine.
She sees a demand for spaces and events that cater to spiritual needs for those who don’t believe in any one religion, and said her own experience has brought her a sense of peace.
“There is this surge of alternative people looking for enlightenment, really, peace, to feel better than their current state,” Norsworthy said. “A massage is great. It’s therapeutic in itself, but it doesn’t have this lasting effect of breaking old habits, breaking old thought patterns.”
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