Another Look at America's 10 Most — and Least — 'Bible-Minded Cities\

TheBlaze recently brought you the 10 most and least Bible-minded cities, based on a joint multi-year study from the American Bible Society and the Barna Group. Now, Bible Gateway, a popular online Bible database, released some of its own data based on overall reading of the holy text.

While this analysis also points to Bible-mindedness, it differs from the American Bible Society's study, which looked at two main elements: combined levels of regular reading of the Bible (self-reported consumption in the past seven days) and belief in the text’s accuracy.

In contrast, Bible Gateway solely examined its readers' usage of the Bible, meaning that belief in the validity of the text was not measured.

Image source: Bible Gateway

The website's popularity by location was measured and ranked based on usage -- and a map was created to highlight the results.

The top 25 cities where Bible Gateway was most popular on a per-household basis are shown in dark blue. The next 25 are highlighted in light blue, with the next 25 in light red and the last 25 highlighted with dark red.

"The size of the dot indicates how many relative pageviews per household occurred on Bible Gateway -- the cities with the highest usage of Bible Gateway have about five times more pageviews per household than the cities with the lowest usage," Bible Gateway explained.

While the map doesn't show Bible usage among Americans overall, it monitors all use on Bible Gateway -- an extremely popular web portal for monitoring and examining Bible passages.

Below find the top 10 cities where Bible Gateway was most used in 2013:

Image source: Bible Gateway

There are notable differences between the top cities in the Bible Gateway analysis and the top cities in the American Bible Society study. For instance, while Atlanta, Ga., takes the top spot, it ranked number 29 in the American Bible Society's list of Bible-minded cities.

When it comes to the least Bible-minded cities, those on the bottom end of the 100 cities included in the Bible Gateway analysis do match up more closely with the American Bible Society study's findings.

Hartford, Conn., for instance, came in the 90th slot in the latest analysis, while it was ranked 94th by the American Bible Society.

See the 10 least Bible-minded cities below:

Image source: Bible Gateway

There are several reasons why the two analyses came to different results. First and foremost, one study looked at the nation as a whole, while the other only focused on use of one specific portal.

Then there's the fact that Bible Gateway didn't examine whether readers also believed the Bible's text as truth -- an essential element in the American Bible Society study.

It's unclear whether Bible Gateway advertises in certain cities or whether there are other extenuating circumstances that could be boosting the site's usage in specific locations.

See the complete Bible Gateway analysis here.

(H/T: Christianity Today)

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Featured image via Bible Gateway