When asked to express the importance of God in their lives on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “not at all important,” and 10 being “very important,” Americans rated Him at an average of 4.6 in 2017 — down from 8.2 in just over a decade, according to an excerpt of Inglehart’s book, “Religion’s Sudden Decline,” in the current issue of Foreign Affairs…

Why the dramatic change in only a decade? Inglehart portrays the U.S. shift as part of a global trend also perceptible in 43 of the 49 countries (containing 60 percent of the world’s population) that he studied.

That trend, in turn, reflects an even more sweeping one: Social and economic development renders human survival less precarious, human suffering less dramatic — and human beings less needful of existential comfort or guidance from age-old traditions.