Religious Outlier (Wealthy Countries tend to be LESS religious with ONE BIG Outlier)

New York Times ^ | 09/04/2010 | Charles M. Blow

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With all of the consternation about religion in this country, it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of just how anomalous our religiosity is in the world.

Gallup report issued on Tuesday underscored just how out of line we are. Gallup surveyed people in more than 100 countries in 2009 and found that religiosity was highly correlated to poverty. Richer countries in general are less religious.

But that doesn’t hold true for the United States.

Sixty-five percent of Americans say that religion is an important part of their daily lives. That is compared with just 30 percent of the French, 27 percent of the British and 24 percent of the Japanese.

I used Gallup’s data to chart religiosity against gross domestic product per capita, and to group countries by their size and dominant religions.

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[SeekAndFind]

CLICK HERE FOR THE GALLUP SURVEY :

http://www.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-world-poorest-nations.aspx

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The global median proportion of adults who say religion is an important part of their daily lives is 84%, unchanged from what Gallup has found in other years. In 10 countries and areas, at least 98% say religion is important in their daily lives.

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[wendy1946]

Americans are better consumers than the people of other nations. That includes being better at diagnosing and avoiding bad products, including bad ideological doctrines like evolution.

[SeekAndFind]

The United States is among the rich countries that buck the trend.

[JRandomFreeper]

Islam=poverty, apparently. From a non-religious point of view, it seems obvious that Christian beliefs are better rewarded in this world.

Funny how both Israel and the US are on the right side of the median.

From a religious perspective, I pray that we return the US to her Christian roots so that those blessing can be multiplied.

/johnny

[DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis]

>> Islam=poverty, apparently. <<

Shocking! /s

[skr]

Amen!

[rex regnum insanit]

Must have been reported through gritted teeth. This has got to drive the folks at the NY Times absolutely, stark raving, carpet chewing nuts!

[RJR_fan]

Thanks for posting this. I forwarded the source pages to a Turkish friend who is pursuing a PhD in economics.

[9YearLurker]

Have they not read Max Weber?

Things would look rather different and less inscrutable if they aligned the countries by their dominant religion and cultural heritage.

[LadyDoc]

the report is misleading, because quite a few countries in the “non religious” part of their survey were religious a generation ago...(e.g. Canada, parts of Europe)...

So the loss of faith came after they came wealthy, they didn’t become wealthy because they were atheistic.

And some non Christian countries like Japan promote ethical behavior outside of their religious practice. So that confuses folks from the west who assume religion and ethics are connected. They are in the Judeo Christian world, but not necessarily elsewhere.

[aruanan]

And some non Christian countries like Japan promote ethical behavior outside of their religious practice. So that confuses folks from the west who assume religion and ethics are connected. They are in the Judeo Christian world, but not necessarily elsewhere.

Don't make the error of assuming that "religion" means "belief in a supernatural deity." Neither classical Buddhism nor Marxism feature a belief in a supernatural deity, but both are religions with a set of ethics.