I lived in Indiana the first 35 years of life, generally in towns with 3000-70,000 people. It was quite common for folks to go to church. Single? Want friends? and so on? You needed church. It was really, really common. To the point that folks weren't as willing to be openly athiest or customers at a retail place to assume that since employees were nice, they must all be good Christians. It was definitely mentioned, and wasn't uncommon for folks to ask where others went to church.
I always got the impression that larger cities or different areas were more free with this sort of thing.
I now live in Norway, and I know very few folks that spend a lot of time at church. There definitely aren't nearly as many of them here in town, and I think half the churches are as much of a tourist attraction as they are places for congregation. There is also more activities that aren't connected with any sort of religion here as well - organized volunteer work, for example, with no affiliation with religion.
> I always got the impression that larger cities or different areas were more free with this sort of thing.
Historically that's been one of the points of cities: if you don't like the rules where you live you go to a city where there are too many people for that sort of conformism. Of course some cities become large enough that they can have self-selected pockets similar to smaller conurbations. Interesting that the 70K town you lived in (not much bigger than Palo Alto) also exhibited this culture, though presumably less intensely.
I lived in Indiana the first 35 years of life, generally in towns with 3000-70,000 people. It was quite common for folks to go to church. Single? Want friends? and so on? You needed church. It was really, really common. To the point that folks weren't as willing to be openly athiest or customers at a retail place to assume that since employees were nice, they must all be good Christians. It was definitely mentioned, and wasn't uncommon for folks to ask where others went to church.
I always got the impression that larger cities or different areas were more free with this sort of thing.
I now live in Norway, and I know very few folks that spend a lot of time at church. There definitely aren't nearly as many of them here in town, and I think half the churches are as much of a tourist attraction as they are places for congregation. There is also more activities that aren't connected with any sort of religion here as well - organized volunteer work, for example, with no affiliation with religion.