WASHINGTON -- Despite laments from some quarters about America's secularization, the United States is the most religious nation in the industrialized world, according to a new poll.
The Pew Global Attitudes Project, released in late December, showed that six in 10 Americans said religion plays a "very important" role in their lives. That is twice the rate of Canada and England, and almost six times the rate of Japan and France, according to a Washington Times report.
The survey covered 44 nations. It found that America's religiosity appeared more akin to the high rate of religious commitment in predominantly Muslim nations than to its secularized peers in the Western world. For example, 91 percent of Pakistani respondents to the survey said religion was very important in their lives.
"The jury is still out on whether the United States will become as secular as Europe one day," Fuller Theological Seminary professor Eddie Gibbs told the Times. Fuller is an evangelical school in Pasadena, Calif.
"The predictions from the 1960s that American church attendance and conventional belief would decline did not come true," he said.
