The economists also don’t have much of an answer to a very specifically economic conundrum: the fact that, country by country, prosperity and a sense of security correlate with less religious belief almost everywhere—except America. As the political scientists Pippa Norris of Harvard and Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan explain in Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, “religiosity persists most strongly among vulnerable populations, especially in poorer nations and in failed states. Conversely, a systematic erosion of religious practices, values, and beliefs has
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