For decades, experts have been predicting that secularization would drive out religion. According to this study by Harvard University political scientist Pippa Norris and University of Michigan research scientist, Ronald Inglehart, those prophecies won't be coming true anytime soon.
"The classic social scientists were confident—and at one time it looked like this to me—that religion was dying out. And it's quite obviously not dying out," Inglehart told the Journal in a recent interview. "It has been going through an evolution, and in Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide we try to explain how it's changing." That doesn't mean secularization is going away, but religion persists because people need it, especially in times of insecurity.
The study was based on data from the Values Surveys 1981-2001, which covered 80 societies around the globe and included all the world's major faiths. It shows that traditional religion is strong in less developed and less stable countries, and is seriously declining in highly developed Western Europe. But the United States, which is rich and highly developed, is an exception, because it is also very religious.
