Poll: America Most Religious Among its Allies
America is the most religious country among its allies with only two percent of its citizens saying they do not believe in God, according to a recent Associated Press poll.
America is the most religious country among its allies with only two percent of its citizens saying they do not believe in God, according to a recent Associated Press poll.
"In the United States, you have an abundance of religions trying to motivate Americans to greater involvement," said Roger Finke, a sociologist at Penn State University, to AP. "It's one thing that makes a tremendous difference here."
In a poll conducted across 10 countries in May, nearly all U.S. respondents said faith is important to them and 98 percent said they believe in God.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
According to AP, the only other nation that comes close to that level of religious devotion among America’s allies is Mexico. However, unlike Mexicans, Americans are open to clergy lobbying lawmakers and mixing faith with politics; nearly 40 percent of those polled in the states said religious leaders should try to sway policymakers.
"Our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian policies and religious leaders have an obligation to speak out on public policy, otherwise they're wimps," said David Black, a retiree from Osborne, Pa., who agreed to be interviewed by AP after he was polled.
The polling was conducted in the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea and Spain.
The most secularized nations among the ten were in Western Europe. France is a case in point, with 85 percent of its people objecting to clergy activism, and 19 percent adhering to atheism.
South Korea is the only other nation with that high a percentage of nonbelievers. But two-thirds of South Koreans say religion is central to their lives. Citizens in both France and Korea say politics and religion should not mix.
The poll comes soonafter the National Association of Evangelicals adopted a booklet that calls on Christians to answer their civic duty by getting more involved in politics.
Entitled, “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility,” the booklet marked “a milestone in the movement of evangelicals from the insularity of a revival tent mind-set in the early 20th century to the political activism of the 21st century,” according to NAE online.
The Associated Press-Ipsos polls of about 1,000 adults in each of the 10 countries were taken May 12-26. Each has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The survey also found trends across national boundaries, which included the pattern of women being more devout than men and older people having stronger faith than younger people.
Poll results are available at:
http://wid.ap.org/polls/050606religion.html
