CONNECTICUT — Thomas Hooker, prominent Puritan minister and leader of the colonists who founded Connecticut, would be proud. A new report names the Nutmeg State among the least sinful in the country.
What does that even mean?
Personal finance site WalletHub compared the 50 states across seven key categories, based on the Roman Catholic Church’s traditional seven deadly bad boys: “Anger & Hatred,” “Jealousy,” “Greed,” “Lust,” “Vanity,””Laziness” and “Excesses & Vices.” That last catch-all category includes fast food joints per capita, marijuana use, coffee drinking, debt-to-income ratio and the number of opioid prescriptions dispensed.
Connecticut ranked 40th overall in sinfulness, well below list leader Nevada (obviously!) the state in the top spot.
If you’re confused because you don’t remember filling out a WalletHub survey of your lustful proclivities, or wonder who has been spying on you as you are preening in the mirror each morning, relax. According to Julie Byrne, chair of the Department of Religion and Jewish Studies, professor of Religion and Hartman Chair of Catholic Studies at Hofstra University, sin can be systemic.
“So if there are sins in our systems, such as in the legal system, political system, financial system, or even religious organizations themselves, then people living in those systems have a harder time being healthy and good. Sometimes they have no good choices, only “the lesser of two evils”—such as when someone is choosing between not paying the rent and not paying for medicine,” Byrne said.
What’s Your Vice Index?
WalletHub analysts examined each state’s systemic sinfulness across 47 metrics, each graded on a 100-point scale, with a “vice index” of 100 representing the highest level of poor choices made. Metrics included identity-theft complaints per capita as part of their quantification of “jealousy,” and teen birth rate as a flag for “lust.” A complete guide to methodology can be found here.
Source: WalletHub
Connecticut’s most prevalent sin is its “Anger & Hatred,” scoring 47 in that category. Our collective “Vanity” tracked the lowest among our indiscretions, registering just a 19, according to WalletHub’s calculations.
The wages of sin may be death, but the cost of sin is no day at the beach, either. Gambling alone costs the U.S. about $5 billion per year, and the tab for smoking is staggering, over $300 billion annually. (Utah has the lowest share of adult smokers, 8.20 percent, which is 2.9 times lower than in West Virginia, the state with the highest at 23.60 percent, according to WalletHub analysts.)
Based on the WalletHub numbers, Alaska has added new meaning to the phrase “ugly crime.” The state reported the highest violent crime rate and the fewest beauty salons, per population size.
COVID has made our collective vice index worse, of course, as that is what COVID does.
“During the pandemic, alcohol addiction, and associated domestic violence, increased as governments removed safety guardrails to alcohol sales, and made alcohol ever more readily available through e-commerce marketing, online order and delivery, and drive-up drinks,” according to Maryann Cusimano Love, an associate professor at The Catholic University of America. “Of course, alcoholics must accept responsibility for the harm they cause. But are individuals alone to blame when powerful corporations harm brains and bodies with toxic substances?”
Ryan Cragun, a sociology professor at The University of Tampa, rejects the whole premise of the survey. Sins don’t actually exist, according to Cragun, they are merely a social construct flagged by some religions to label certain behaviors that run counter to their teachings.
“For instance, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that drinking coffee is a sin. For many Jews and Muslims, eating pork is a sin. And for Jain priests, killing insects is a sin. But none of those behaviors are ‘sins’ for Catholics or Atheists,” Cragun said. “People in Utah likely consume less coffee than do people in Rhode Island, but that does not make Rhode Islanders more sinful than are Utahans.”
Just don’t try explaining that to Thomas Hooker…
This article originally appeared on the Bethel Patch