I've seen a lot of estimates that put the fundie population at about 30 percent overall (although I can't find any right now), with significant regional variations. So if you're in a group of 10 people at the store or bank or ..., statistically, three of them will be religiously insane. Comforting, eh?
A 2003
University of Michigan study concluded that the US "...remains one of the most religious nations in the world."
About 46 percent of American adults attend church at least once a week, not counting weddings, funerals and christenings, compared with 14 percent of adults in Great Britain, 8 percent in France, 7 percent in Sweden and 4 percent in Japan.
Moreover, 58 percent of Americans say that they often think about the meaning and purpose of life, compared with 25 percent of the British, 26 percent of the Japanese, and 31 percent of West Germans, the study says.
As to the alleged social benefits of religion, a 2005 study published in the
Journal of Religion and Society concludes that a high level of religiosity doesn't correlate with a healthy society.
It is commonly held that religion makes people more just, compassionate, and moral, but a new study suggests that the data belie that assumption. In fact, at first glance it would seem, religion has the opposite effect. The extensive study, "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies," examines statistics from 18 of the most developed democratic nations. It reveals clear correlations between various indicators of social strife and religiosity, showing that whether religion causes social strife or not, it certainly does not prevent it.
The author of the study, Gregory S. Paul, writes that it is "...not an attempt to present a definitive study that establishes cause versus effect between religiosity, secularism and societal health." However, the study does show a direct correlation between religiosity and dysfunctionality, which if nothing else, disproves the widespread belief that religiosity is beneficial, that secularism is detrimental, and that widespread acceptance of evolution is harmful.
Surveys show that many Americans agree "their church-going nation is an exceptional, God blessed, 'shining city on the hill' that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly skeptical world." This assumption flies in the face of the actual statistical evidence that Paul examined.
OK, we're stuck with the highest level of religiosity seen in the industrialized world, on a par with those stone-age tribes in the Amazon that occasionally get "discovered" by some anthropologist grad student. So what? Well, there's this from the 2005 report...
All of the subsequent results that compare religiosity against dysfunctionality show a basic correlation between the two, though anomalies exist. Paul’s second figure (Figures 1 and 2 here) shows a positive correlation between religiosity and homicide rates.
The United States is a strong exception, experiencing far higher rates of homicide than even (strongly theistic) Portugal, while Portugal itself is beset by much more homicide than the secular developed democracies. Hardly a "shining city on a hill" to the rest of the world, Paul writes that, "The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly." This deviates immensely from what most Americans consider to be common wisdom: that religion is beneficial. "But in the other developed democracies religiosity continues to decline precipitously and avowed atheists often win high office, even as clergies warn about adverse societal consequences if a revival of creator belief does not occur."
Well, gawd bless America, 'cause nobody else seems to want to.
wp
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