Religion is a big reason why the US is different from the rest of the world.
In 1966, Time magazine famously examined whether the United States was on a path to secularization when it published its now-iconic “Is God Dead?” cover.
However, the question proved premature: The U.S. remains a robustly religious country and the most devout of all the rich Western democracies.
In fact, Americans pray more often, are more likely to attend weekly religious services and ascribe higher importance to faith in their lives than adults in other wealthy, Western democracies, such as Canada, Australia, and most European states, according to a recent Pew Research Center study.
For instance, more than half of American adults say they pray daily, compared with 25% in Canada, 18% in Australia and 6% in Great Britain. (The average European country stands at 22%.)
Actually, when it comes to their prayer habits, Americans are more like people in much poorer, developing nations – including South Africa (52%), Bangladesh (57%) and Bolivia (56%) – than people in richer countries.
As it turns out, the U.S. is the only country out of 102 examined in the study that has higher-than-average levels of both prayer and wealth. In every other country surveyed with a gross domestic product of more than $30,000 per person, fewer than 40% of adults say they pray every day.
One idea popular among modern sociologists for a number of decades held that America’s unregulated and open religious “market” – where different faiths compete freely for new members without government interference – has fostered fertile ground for religious growth.