OPINION: Chattanooga, once the most churchgoing city in the country, now ranked the 37th most sinful

Dec. 7--Talk about Santa Claus knowing when you are bad or good. Santa apparently hasn't met the folks at WalletHub.

WalletHub, a personal finance website, on Monday issued its report on "2020's Most Sinful Cities in America," and Chattanooga is 37th on the list (behind Las Vegas at the top).

The folks there have checked out how lustful, vain, greedy, jealous and lazy we are, among other things.

We're worse -- that is, higher on the list -- than Richmond, Virginia, with all of its Confederate controversies, worse than Minneapolis, Minnesota, where George Floyd was killed at the hands of police this summer, worse than Reno, Nevada, with all its gambling, Nashville, with its nightlife on Broadway, and Seattle, where anarchists held part of the city this summer.

Fortunately, we're less sinful -- that is, lower on the list -- than Memphis (No. 16) and Knoxville (No. 27), so there's that.

We're not sure whether we would term what WalletHub does as scientific, but its does aggregate a raft of statistics from the likes of the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Chronicle of Philanthropy and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to compile its figures. And lists are always good fodder, whether you believe what they show or not.

Chattanooga is no stranger to these lists by WalletHub and others. Over the past decade, the city has been ranked as one of the top 100 best places to live in America, of best cities to retire in America, of cities with the lowest cost of living in America and of best cities for outdoor activities in America.

It's also been ranked as the 20th most dangerous city in the U.S. and the eighth worst place for migraines. We get a headache ourselves thinking about all the factors that determine these rankings.

Chattanooga also has been listed as the most Bible-minded city and the most churchgoing city in the country.

So where did we get all the sin?

Well, the folks at the website came up with a vice index, based on how the cities ranked on anger and hatred, jealousy, excesses and vices, greed, lust, vanity and laziness.

That's each of the seven deadly sins except for pride because gluttony falls under excesses and vices for purposes of the study.

The city ranks lowest (meaning a higher number) in anger and hatred -- 13th worst in the country. The number assimilates categories such as violent crimes per 1,000 residents, sex offenders per capita, bullying rate and number of mass shootings.

The 2015 terrorist attack at two military installations, in which four Marines and one Navy sailor were killed, may have contributed to that figure.

Our next worst category is greed, where we are 26th in the U.S.. That stems, according to the study, from the share of adults with gambling disorders, casino per capita and charitable donation as a share of income.

Since Chattanooga was listed 14th in the country in a 2013 poll of the most generous cities, according to NerdWallet, and gives far more than the national average to charitable and religious groups, according to a 2012 study by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, we must have a lot of residents with a gambling problem. With the Nov. 1 legality of sports betting in the state, that number is unlikely to improve.

Our excesses and vices land us at No. 31 on the list. We would have guessed this would be the city's worst category since its includes share of obese adults, fast-food establishments per capita, excessive drinking, share of adult smokers, share of population using marijuana, retail opioid prescriptions dispensed per 1,000 persons, drug overdose deaths and debt-to-income ratio.

Chattanooga is 36th in the country in jealousy, which deals with thefts per 1,000 residents, identify-theft complaints per capita, and fraud and other complaints per capita.

We drop down to 59th worst in laziness, which includes share of adults not exercising, average weekly hours worked, volunteer rate, average daily time spent watching TV, high school dropout rate and disconnected youth (teenagers and young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither in school nor working).

Fortunately, of the 182 cities on the list, we're a little better in vanity (102nd) and lust (118th).

Vanity might be viewed in a number of ways, but for the purposes of the study it included tanning salons per capita and Google search interest index for "Top 3 Plastic Surgeons." Lust is calculated from the number of adult entertainment establishments per capita, Google search interest index for "XXX Entertainment," most active Tinder (a dating website) users and teen birth rate.

In the end, we don't put a lot of stock in such rankings, as fun as they are to pick apart. As a city, we know who we are. We have a wealth of natural beauty, many generous citizens and the same problems that are found in practically every city. From our perspective, our job as citizens is to preserve what we have and diligently work on what we can change.

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