An opinion article in the Washingtonpost.com compared the crime rate of Christian America versus atheist countries like Japan and Sweden and implied that America’s Christian beliefs lead to higher crime rate.

Consider that at the societal level, murder rates are far lower in secularized nations such as Japan or Sweden than they are in the much more religious United States, which also has a much greater portion of its population in prison. Even within this country, those states with the highest levels of church attendance, such as Louisiana and Mississippi, have significantly higher murder rates than far less religious states such as Vermont and Oregon.

I feel this article fails to look at the fact that America is so large geographically and socioeconomically compared to the mentioned countries which are much smaller and homogeneous. So it stands to reason that they will have lower crime rate. For example the crime rate of La Jolla, CA. is going to be much different than in east L.A., that’s socioeconomic. Basically I can’t see how Christianity is causing more crime in America nor does the lack of religious beliefs cause less as the article is implying.