# Why is the US so religious? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 14, 2005, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846 "2005-05-14T18:04:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/41 "2005-05-15T12:35:46Z")
Really? I participate in a [board](http://apolyton.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=147) that is about 50% European, and their level of knowledge of the arcana of one ideology or another is sobering in its totality. This is typical: > [@](#): > > I’ve been re-reading The German Ideology and it has resurfaced several questions I’ve had about Marxism that have been troubling me for a while. > In western societies the class system hasn’t become what Marx predicted. The traditional proletarian classes are doing quite well for themselves, and even own their own property (even if it is from loans). Is this what Marx saw as a “labour aristocracy”?. There is also a non-ownership managerial class that, while satisfying Marx’s criteria for proletarian status (they sell their labour to an owning class), appear as reactionary as the bourgeoisie (presumably because their power is dependent on the owning class). The most radical and revolutionary classes seem to be students, who (apart from having part time jobs) don’t seem to fit into Marx’s schema, and will likely use their qualifications to advance to reactionary class positions. In Australia, tradespeople seem to form a distinctive layer in the cake too… > Can this be explained away by calling them petit bourgeoisie? No, because they are simply middle income owners of their own means, whereas these new classes still have to sell their labour power, and yet this gives them the ability to own their own (though not necessarily productive) private property. Is this due to post-war Keynesianism? Is it an aberration that will pass once global capitalism becomes more firmly rooted? Are these contradictory class positions or is Weber’s class system (the unequal distribution of life chances) more applicable. > Or could it be that the class system has simply become international (i.e. Wallerstein)? But then how do dependency theorists explain the rise of newly industrializing economies (i.e. the Asian tigers)? > I have my own suspicions… but I’d like to hear from some of the Marxian Political Economists on this site. I see sense in Marx’s historical materialism but I think his predictions failed to grasp the complexity of the future and the prospect of changing material conditions and the rise of new forces of production. Once these questions have been answered I’ll move on to my next theoretical question regarding Marx, which concerns culture. This is from a 20 year-old (Australian, but educated in the UK.) Now I wasn’t the biggest social butterfly in high school/college, but I’ve met very few 20 year-olds here in the States who would even ask such a question. much less be “troubled” by it. To be honest, this also is a purely anecdotal observation. Maybe there are boards full of Europeans that don’t talk like this - if so, I don’t visit them 😉 ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/42 "2005-05-15T12:38:28Z")
I think at least part of the answer is that it wasn’t that many generations ago that many Americans lived directly off the land. When your survival depends on that crop coming in, you might be more inclined to be petitioning the Almighty for assistance. Those that prospered may have given some of the credit to God and thus felt the need to maintain a close relationship with Him. Another factor is that many Americans came here precisely because they wanted to practice their religion in peace. For those that believed religion was important enough to cross an ocean for, it’s quite plausible that they have passed down that importance through the generations. Still another factor is the faith of black Americans. People who are oppressed often turn to religion, see 1980s Poland, European Jews 1930s, etc. When earthly life offers no hope, then the afterlife becomes more attractive. After generations of slavery and then segregation and Jim Crow, the deep faith of many American blacks is easy to understand. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/43 "2005-05-15T13:47:51Z")
I think the most remarkable case is that of Ireland. In 30 years, they have gone from being 99+% deeply religious, strict Catholics, to being some of the least religious people in Europe. Somebody mentuioned Quebec-I can personally attest to THEIR transformation (I was educated by an order of French Canadian Brothers). The French-Canadaians have totally turned away from the strict Catholicism of their ancestors. The question is why? ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/44 "2005-05-15T13:55:05Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Maybe there are boards full of Europeans that don’t talk like this - if so, I don’t visit them 😉 Let me put it this way: you stay on the boards you are on now. I wouldn’t want to go around bursting any bubbles. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/45 "2005-05-15T13:59:21Z")
> [@Priceguy](#): > > Let me put it this way: you stay on the boards you are on now. I wouldn’t want to go around bursting any bubbles. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/46 "2005-05-15T14:12:45Z")
With regards to Quebec, the _practice_ of Catholicism by the population at large wasn’t all that strict, but the church definitely had a lock on most power structures. Case in point-- if you look at census records from 1880 and 1890, you will find that in Quebec, the people who went door-to-door were Catholic brothers, nuns, etc…, and they frequently altered the data that was collected. There are multiple cases of women living at home alone who wrote down ‘divorced’ as marital status, since they hadn’t seen their husbands in years, and for all they knew he was living in Maine. In the records the word ‘divorced’ is crossed out and replaced with the word ‘married’ or ‘widowed’. I think much the same power structure exists in the U.S. Working here in a newsroom, it’s a frequent response whenever something happens in a neighbourhood to go get a clip from the local religious leader. Why? Becuse they’re around and will likely have something to say, and are all too willing to thrust themselves into the spotlight. But if you ask me, that religious leader isn’t having too much of an effect on his flock if they’re out dealing drugs and fighting other gangs… Same thing with the whole rise of the religious right as a power group in U.S. politics. James Dobson, his Focus on the Family, and other groups are _guaranteed_ to have a viewpoint on anything remotely controversial. Since the modern view of news is to present ‘both sides of the story’, getting a clip from a religious type is half your work done right there. But does the population at large actually agree with what their religious leaders say? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Most of the nation strongly opposed what extremists wanted with regards to Terri Schiavo, and about 40 % of the country opposes gay marriage-- but support for gay civil union is about 46%. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/47 "2005-05-15T16:20:29Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > I think the most remarkable case is that of Ireland. In 30 years, they have gone from being 99+% deeply religious, strict Catholics, to being some of the least religious people in Europe. Somebody mentuioned Quebec-I can personally attest to THEIR transformation (I was educated by an order of French Canadian Brothers). The French-Canadaians have totally turned away from the strict Catholicism of their ancestors. The question is why? As has been mentioned before (and this would also apply to places like Spain pre- vs. post- Franco), if for a long time living by the dictates of the church is just “what you do” because it’s the social-cultural expectation (or in Ireland and Spain, legally enforceable), then piety develops shallow roots. A lot of the Irish, Quebecois and Spanish were just going thru the motions because it was “what respectable people do”, subject to social inconvenience – and saw no way out of it, as these societies were effectively insularized except for small elites. As that insularity broke, the population found things they cared more about than a religion that for many of them was just a rote ritual. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/48 "2005-05-15T16:29:47Z")
> [@Malodorous](#): > > Out of curiousity, is American religion still in decline? I have a vague sense that while the current political climate has made people feel their is a religoius upswelling int the US, that this may not in fact be the case. Anyone have any relavant statistics? I think it would help clarify what we’re discussing in this debate. I think so and I think this is why religion has become important in politics. It seems to me that the super-religious notice the decline in church attendance, equate that with weakening religion and become politically super-active because they fear the loss of religion. ---
**Author:** ![jimmmy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/73ab20/32.png) [@jimmmy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimmmy)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/49 "2005-05-15T18:39:34Z")
As noted, almost the entire Western Hemisphere, Africa, the ME, SW Asia have similar injections of God into political discourse as the U.S. - some a little more, some a bit less. Europe and if we exclude (former and currently communist "Asia”, SE Asia and Japan because they clearly are on a different religious-political track) then Europe sort of stands alone in this reagrd … and I think that is because of what has touched on: state Churches, Religious and political institutional interests were so intertwined : co-opting, corrupting and cooperating with each other in ways that really had no parallel elsewhere in the World. In this regard Europe is unique, and I won’t say differently. However, I think there is another politcal thread at play here… One way to conceptualize this is to think of it as this:“Traditional Values” campaigns mainly aimed at keeping perceived threatening societal change at bay take a religious message in the U.S. In Europe (becuas eof what was noted above and by other posters) this message takes the guise of anti-immigration and immigration secularization and absorption programs that would never be acceptable in the U.S. These forces are as strong (or stronger in the U.S.) but instead of being turned against immigrants are turned inward against contraception, abortion, prayer in school, and other assorted “traditonal values” threateners. Aimed mainly at White middle class traditional family voters, Both poltical processes, in Europe and in the U.S., are the same processes: Folks want things to be like they were in an unspecified “better time” -they don’t want things to change and think they can use law to turn back the clock. It is a strong human urge that is being co-opted and exploited by politicians on both continents. I am saying that the “religious political right” in America is the same basic political movement as the anti-immigration political force is in Europe. They aim at the same people and both ultimately want (essentially) the same thing. That is not the whole of an answer to the OP – but it is part of it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/50 "2005-05-15T19:29:28Z")
> [@Sage Rat](#): > > The Bible Belt is the big issue. > > But not sure of the history of that area which caused it to become “The Bible belt”, so I can’t comment other than to point thataway. Goes back to colonial times. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible\_belt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_belt). Of course, Pennsylvania and New England were also colonized by religious fanatics (Quakers and Puritans, respectively). Why has the religious heritage of those regions been transmogrified into the secularist social liberalism of Greater New England (NE plus the Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest) while that of the South has remained mired in anti-intellectual social-religious conservatism? Lot of reasons, but the cosmopolitan effects of early industrialization in the Northeast probably has a lot to do with it. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/51 "2005-05-15T19:34:00Z")
Please note that no Democratic President has avoided expression of faith. Hell, I have a tape of FDR promoting the war effort as a defense of Christian civilization against the Nazi “Pagan society with a Pagan Church”. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/52 "2005-05-15T19:37:00Z")
> [@Malodorous](#): > > Out of curiousity, is American religion still in decline? I have a vague sense that while the current political climate has made people feel their is a religoius upswelling int the US, that this may not in fact be the case. Anyone have any relavant statistics? I think it would help clarify what we’re discussing in this debate. Depends on what you mean by “decline.” From _The Next American Nation,_ by Michael Lind (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1996), pp. 278-279: > [@](#): > > Conservatives do not recognize how much the nation has changed since the fifties in its religious attitudes. It may be that the religion of nominal Christians in the United States can no longer be described as traditional trinitarian Christian. The scholarly term for their belief is henotheism, the belief that all ethnic groups and cultures have, and should have, their own gods and rites. **In Christian theology, this is the heresy of indifferentism.** Robert Linder and Richard Pierard have described the evolution of American civil religion: “Its umbrella has changed from evangelical consensus to Protestantism-in-general, to Christianity-in-general, to the Judeo-Christian tradition in general, to deism-in-general.” The decline in belief in Christianity as the only true religion has been extraordinarily rapid in the United States. In a poll taken in 1924 in Muncie, Indiana, 94 percent of high school students agreed that “Christianity is the one true religion and all peoples should be converted to it.” By the late 1970s, merely 38 percent of respondents in a later poll in Muncie agreed that Christianity was the only true faith. Two-thirds of the respondents in a 1991 poll agreed that Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists “pray to the same God.” Perhaps was distinguishes the contemporary religious right from “mainstream” American Christianity is that the it cannot be accused of “the heresy of indifferentism.” ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/53 "2005-05-15T19:41:08Z")
The point made above about southern and other predominantly non-urban cultures growing around churches is an extremely important one. The role of the church in black culture for centuries also cannot be underestimated (the one place where they could be relatively free to gather and commune without white people present) and thus civic organization and identity became fused with religion. In the south as well the heavy loss of life and crippling socioeconomic changes during and following the Civil War caused much introspection that even strenghtened the church:state bond, as well as an intense distrust and despising of anything northern or otherwise an affront to “tradition” (evolution, civil rights for blacks and gays, etc) was an invasive body that had to be repelled because they’d lost too much of their identity already. I’ll be flamed for saying this, but I honestly think one reason that politics has become so intensely religion oriented in the south is that it’s a substitute for open racism. While a politician can no longer shout “N\*GGER!” and hope to get elected, he _can_ say “Remember when we had prayer in schools? Things were so much better then…” Prayer left schools in the south not terribly long after (in some places before) they were racially integrated. “When we had prayer in schools” translates as “back when schools were all-white” or “back before black empowerment”. To the older generations it’s also “remember when your body was young and you still had hopes and dreams you thought you would fulfill and above all you knew how everything worked and what the natural order should be back before the paradigm shifted every Tuesday”. And “remember a time when there was moral certainty, back before you were forced to confront the fact that your world was based on a blood soaked history of inequities and that the people you revered in your youth were actually racially opressive bigots”? Trent Lott’s fall was related to this: he made traditionalist Southerners lose the euphemism that sustains them for a moment and that was fatal. It’s one thing to talk about how wonderful the nation was when you had the post WW2 patriotism and the “prayers in school”, but when he parised not just a vague lost Eden but specifically the bid for the presidency of an ardent racial separatist, he laid naked the ugliness of that aspect of southern culture and unintentionally removed the _Magnolia Myth Interface_ of happy black people living below poverty level because they didn’t want any better and a rigidly uniform rural caste system that was that way because “dad gum we liked it that way” rather than mass media condemning it was still suppressable and economic vassalage to husbands and companies would allow nothing else, etc… It’s the job of any nostalgist to eliminate the negative aspects and he hiccoughed on the job. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/54 "2005-05-15T19:58:59Z")
> [@Malodorous](#): > > Out of curiousity, is American religion still in decline? I have a vague sense that while the current political climate has made people feel their is a religoius upswelling int the US, that this may not in fact be the case. Anyone have any relavant statistics? I think it would help clarify what we’re discussing in this debate. And here’s some more recent stats, based on the 2000 census – [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics\_of\_the\_United\_States:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States:) > [@](#): > > the proportion of the population that can be classified as Christian has declined from 86% in 1990 to 77% in 2001; > > although the number of adults who classify themselves in non-Christian religious groups has increased from about 5.8 million to about 7.7 million, the proportion of non-Christians has increased only by a very small amount - from 3.3 % to about 3.7 %; > > the greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification; their number has more than doubled from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001; their proportion has grown from just 8% of the total in 1990 to over 14% in 2001; > > there has also been a substantial increase in the number of adults who refused to reply to the question about their religious preference, from about four million or 2% in 1990 to more than eleven million or over 5% in 2001. ---
**Author:** ![Malodorous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e47774/32.png) [@Malodorous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malodorous)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/55 "2005-05-15T21:08:00Z")
Thanks for the stats **Brainglutton**. They fit in with my preception that religious behavior in the US isn’t on the rise, it’s simply declining more slowly then in other places. I also think that part of the reason for the preceived recent growth of religion in the states is due to the fact that while it may be in decline all over, it is falling faster in someplaces then others. Thus while folks in general in Crawford and Boston may both be less observant then they were 15 yrs ago, since Boston has become more secular faster, the preceived difference between the two is greater, allowing Bostonians to say that folks in Crawford are a lot more religious then they used to be. > [@sampiro](#): > > I’ll be flamed for saying this, but I honestly think one reason that politics has become so intensely religion oriented in the south is that it’s a substitute for open racism. While a politician can no longer shout “N\*GGER!” and hope to get elected, he can say “Remember when we had prayer in schools? Things were so much better then…” Won’t flame you, but I strongly disagree. I know a lot of folks who want prayer in school, and they want it because they honestly belive encouraging christian values etc. amonst the young is beneficial. I highly doubt that anything close to a majority use it as some sort of code word for segregation. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/56 "2005-05-16T00:04:01Z")
I don’t think **Sampiro** meant that it was any sort of crypto-racism but that it’s an equivalent, cynical hot button for modern politicians. It’s a direct appeal to the same base tribalism and bigotry. Politicians tell them that the liberals are somehow attacking their religion by not letting them force other people’s kids to practice it and it works like a charm. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/57 "2005-05-16T04:19:33Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#): > > Actually, that’s exactly what it is. “Congress shall pass **NO** law…” There is no such thing as an “abuse” of an inalienable right, only the exercise of it. You omitted the critical part, “… respecting the establishment of religion.” The religious groups in question contend that the First Amendment is frequently bandied about even in situations where a religion is NOT being established. You may personally disagree with that assessment, but that’s immaterial to the topic at hand. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/58 "2005-05-16T05:23:16Z")
> [@jimmmy](#): > > As noted, almost the entire Western Hemisphere, Africa, the ME, SW Asia have similar injections of God into political discourse as the U.S. - some a little more, some a bit less. Europe and if we exclude (former and currently communist "Asia”, SE Asia and Japan because they clearly are on a different religious-political track) then Europe sort of stands alone in this reagrd … Canada as well. Bringing up your religion at all as any kind of qualification for office or justification for your policies, as I see it done in the US, is an excellent way to get yourself laughed off the stage. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/59 "2005-05-16T06:12:00Z")
It isn’t as though Americans just sprang from the ground and have existed in a vacuum untouched by the events in Europe. Those who settled this country bore the legacy of religious difficulties just as much as those who remained in Europe. In fact our 1st Amendment is a pretty good indication that politically minded Americans were just as aware of the dangers of religious strife as our European cousins. In fact throughout U.S. history we’ve had our own little religious conflicts. Catholics and Jews were the target of discrimination and sometimes violence by various groups. The Mormons were persecuted in many areas and once they settled in Utah there was a real chance they might go to war against the United States for independence. They even massacred a group of settlers on their way to California. So I don’t really buy our lack of experience with religious conflicts as being the reason why we’re more religious. Maybe it is because we’ve never had a monolithic religion dominate our cultural landscape. We’ve always had an opportunity to find another church if the one we belonged to didn’t suit our needs. Quakers, Shakers, Methodist, Lutherans, Catholics, Mormons, those folks who dance with snakes in W. Virginia, and god knows what else. We even let those crazy bastards in Innsmouth worship those freaky fish gods until the Feds descended upon them in 1929. Marc ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846/60 "2005-05-16T07:22:44Z")
> [@Eva Luna](#): > > [nitpick] There’s a lot more to the Far East than China. I think the Japanese, Koreans, Thai, Indonesians, Malaysians, Vietnamese, etc. imight have something to say about that. (and as I have no real idea about their daily level of overall religious observance, carry on). Granted, but by far the bulk of the Far East population is in China. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-so-religious/303846.md?page=4)