America’s Blessings: How Religion Benefits Everyone, Including Atheists

In this slim volume, Baylor University sociologist of religion Stark sets out to prove how religious people, by which he means committed, orthodox believers (read: evangelicals), contribute to a stronger, healthier and safer society. Stark has a beef with journalists and with secular academics, two groups he disparages for their perceived hostility to religion. Using various survey data, he shows that religious people commit fewer crimes, suffer less from depression, hold down better jobs, have happier marriages, and volunteer more than the non-religious—all metrics that contribute to a robust civic and economic life. Yet Stark’s analysis seems caught up in the 1980s culture wars, and he offers simplistic reasoning lacking in nuance. He conveniently forgets that evangelicals, and especially Southern Baptists, have as high a divorce rate as the general population, for example. As for why less religious European nations have lower murder rates, he concludes it’s because their citizens can’t buy guns as easily. Religion may well have salubrious effects, and academia has come a long way since Freud and others labeled religion a form of mental illness. But this book, with its polemical slant, is unlikely to convince skeptics. (Nov.)