St. Maximos' Hut

Bill closed his last posting with this: "And now, to wax a bit more empirical…the notion that material comfort is a distraction from heavenly pursuits suggests that as societies become wealthier they become less pious. In recent years scholars have written what I take to be devastating critiques of this “secularization” hypothesis."

I have not read widely on this subject, but the empirical evidence I've seen suggests the opposite. I'm particularly struck by the findings of a recent Pew study ("Among Wealthy Nations...U.S. Stands Alone in Its Embrace of Religion," The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, December 19, 2002). It included data on about three dozen countries giving the percentage in each country reporting "religion very important." The regression that fits through these country-level data points is cold and harsh -- showing a substantial drop in the percent reporting religion very important as per capita income rises. The regression line's predicted values fall from about 80% in the poorest countries to under 20% in the richest countries. The regression controls for nothing else and (thank God) the U.S. proves to be the biggest outlier in the group.