Does Christian Morality Benefit Society?

The average Christian in the US believes that society’s social problems are due to poor application of Christian morals. A paper published by the Journal of Religion and Society finds just the opposite; it measures homicide, youth suicide, STDs, teen pregnancy/birth, and abortion, plotting all of these against various measures of religiosity, and finding that

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly.”

I’m not sure that I want to blame Christianity entirely for this; I think the strong US distrust of government and a belief in the supremacy of the individual creates the attitude of not being responsible for society’s problems, be they the ones listed above, or others such as poverty, the environment or war (pdf link).