ABSTRACT
For many people, religion is the backbone of everyday behavior. World population, which currently totals almost 6.9 billion (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011), includes approximately 2.2 billion Christians, 1.2 billion Muslims, 350 million Buddhists, 1 billion Hindus, 16 million Jews, and 6 million Confucians/Daoists, along with many followers of other small religions (Hunt & Penwell, 2008). Approximately 70 percent of the world’s population follows one of these seven prominent world religions (Hunt & Penwell, 2008). In the United States, 62 percent of citizens self-classify as “highly religious” and are confident that God exists, and 82 percent self-classify as at least somewhat confident that God exists (New Strategist, 2010).
