A common perception, especially in the United States, is that religion is always or generally a positive force in society; even those who claim to be not particularly religious tend to feel that believing in some sort of divine power, attending religious services, and so on may help to ground people in a moral framework that naturally leads to a healthier, more cohesive society. But a widely disseminated study, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, demonstrates that if anything, societal health seems to be more positively correlated with secularism than religion.
Parameters of the Religion Study
The paper, initially published in 2005, drew on data collected over the previous decade from the UN Development Programme, Gallup, the World Health Organization, and other sources. It focused on the so-called “prosperous democracies,” including the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, constituting a data set of around 800 million people.
The nebulous concept of “societal health” was measured using several statistical factors, including rates of homicide, suicide, and other violent crime; frequency of teenage pregnancy, abortion, and STD infections; and life expectancy and infant mortality.
United States Most Religious of Surveyed Nations
In a finding that will be unsurprising to most Americans, the United States scored significantly higher than any of the other studied nations on factors relating to religious belief. These factors included personal belief in a creator, frequency of attendance at religious services, and Biblical literalism.
The U.S. is a true outlier in fervency of religious belief among the other prosperous democracies, all of which are clumped much farther down the religiosity scale, with Norway, Denmark, Japan, and France falling near the least religious end.
High Correlation Between Religiosity and Dysfunction
Contrary to the popular belief of religion as a positive influence on society as a whole, the study actually found precisely the opposite: That less religious societies seem to be healthier than religious ones, as measured by the aforementioned factors.
On every measure, the unusually religious United States scored significantly higher on societal dysfunction factors. Homicide rates per 100,000 people, for example, were much higher in the U.S. than any of the other nations surveyed; even second-place Portugal, also a relatively religious country, made a showing far below that of the U.S. The least religious nations in the survey — France, Spain, Norway, Japan — also fell at the bottom of the scale in regards to homicide rates.
The same pattern emerged on measures of teenage abortion rates, with the United States scoring significantly higher than second-place Australia (with highly atheistic Denmark showing the fewest number of teenage abortions per 1,000 women). STD rates, infant mortality, and other “dysfunctional” factors showed similarly high rates in the U.S. as compared to the far more secular nations in the survey.
The study researchers point out that the study’s finding is only a correlation, and that it is unclear in which direction causation may lie. In other words, it could be that secularism leads to healthier societies, or that societies that are already dysfunctional to some degree tend to become more religious.
Sources:
Paul, Gregory S.. "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies". Journal of Religion and Society. July 22, 2010
Provonsha, Matthew. "Religious Belief and Societal Health". Skeptic Vol 12 No 3 2006: 26-28.
Jenny Ashford - Jenny Ashford is a writer and graphic artist from central Florida. Her main area of interest in her Suite 101 articles is science, with a ...
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