ITEMS OF INTEREST May 18, 2009 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

with contributions from Steve Crabtree, Brett Pelham, Michael Paulson

A TOUR of the world's most religious countries wouldn't be all mountaintop shrines and magnificent temples—it would also take you to some pretty bleak places. Gallup polls in 143 countries reveal that among countries where average annual incomes are $2,000 or less, 92 percent of residents say religion is an important part of their daily lives. By contrast, among the richest countries surveyed—those where average annual incomes are $25,000 or more—that figure drops to 44 percent.

Why is a population's religiosity consistently connected to its wealth, or lack thereof? Sociologists going back to the 19th century have theorized that societies naturally grow more secular as they modernize—that is, as people begin to grow better off in terms of education and living standards, the importance they attach to religion begins to recede.

But these secularization theories have come under fire more recently for their inability to tell the whole story. Other researchers have shown that religion is in fact a powerful positive force for disadvantaged populations. In 2004, Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris used data from the World Values Survey to document a growing "religiosity gap" between developing and industrialized populations. They argued that people in the poorest societies live with much greater vulnerability to forces that threaten their existence, so they're more likely than those in developed nations to rely on religion for hope.

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