Dragan,

Have you read the source article? It is essentially about societal dysfunction in the USA correlated with religiosity, with the USA having the greatest wealth, greatest religious belief according to surveys, and greatest dysfunction indices in the First world. The comparison is with more secular places such as Scandinavia, France and Japan.

3rd World/Eastern Bloc countries are not included in the comparisons because of lack of survey evidence. Which is unfortunate, since we can both think of secular states with extremely high societal dysfunction.

The author's conclusion is that more research is needed. I'd agree with that- especially since I can think of several other possible correlations, such as size of military which has an extremely strong correlation with societal dysfunction. Obviously that doesn't appear in a Journal entitled "Journal of Religion and Society". ;-) If we look for a causative link, lets not forget the "Chicken and Egg" scenario- is US religious fervor a response to societal dysfunction, or vice versa?