The headline findings released last year showed that the overwhelming majority in England and Wales – 71.1 per cent – still regards itself as Christian, with Muslims making up the second largest religious group.

A number of students, encouraged by a tongue-in-cheek internet campaign, also registered themselves as Jedi Knights, after the fictional characters in the Star Wars films.

Fewer than half of American adults read a novel, short story, play or poem in a year’s time. That amazing, dismal confession has stayed with me for months, since the summer report of "Reading at Risk."

The report by the National Endowment for the Arts compares 2002 to 1992 and 1982, using data from Census Bureau surveys. The comparison reveals that fewer Americans than ever before read literature — or read at all. It also reveals the rate of decline is accelerating.

The stronger-than-expected role of moral values signals that the nation's values agenda is likely to be dominated by "social morality" concerns for abortion, gay marriage and stem-cell research--issues vital to Bush's base.

The election also marks a defeat for progressive groups who tried to cast "social justice" concerns of poverty, war and the environment as moral issues.

Either way, Jim Wallis, a self-described progressive evangelical, said neither blue states nor red states should try to claim a corner o­n the values market.

"In the past 10 to 15 years, there's been a lot of interest in wisdom," said developmental psychologist Carolyn Aldwin of Oregon State University. Aldwin helped lead a series of studies known as the Wisdom Project, based at the University of California, Davis.