The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world. “In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.
“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”
I have looked at the paper in question. To my amateur eye, it looks pretty solid, particularly when you look at the scatter plots of attitudes vs . societal ills. The US is always way off in the "ills" side, usually alone but occasionally accompanied by Portugal, which serves as a kind of positive control, being the second most religious and second most dysfunctional Western Democracy.
I first saw the Times article and was skeptical about the strong correlations expressed, thinking that the causes may have been more attributable to the USA's particular historical circumstances; however the correlations with Potugal seem to allay that reservation.
The authors are cautious and repeatedly emphasize that this is a preliminary study.
Still, as it confirms my preconceptions, it is clearly impeccable scholarship.
A link to the journal is here:
web page
My IP automatically grants access, but I don't know if everyone will be able to read the articles.
Edited to insert working URL and tidy up a bit.
[ 05 October 2005: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]