Det er jo lige før du også skal være historiker med dit forskningsområde 🙂

Det kunne man da godt forestille sig. Men det er ganske svært, da den evidens vi har, peger på at religiøsitet af enhver observans er skadelig for f.eks. tillid på tværs af både rige og fattige lande, og på tværs af de 50 amerikanske stater. Og ser man på andre forhold som f.eks. hvor relativt fredelig, politik er i Danmark, er det en status der strækker sig tilbage til et godt stykke før reformationen. Hvis man skal argumentere for, at religionen har været en positiv påvirkning på Danmark, må man argumentere for nogle forhold, der ikke gælder i dag, og ikke har virket i andre lande.

It’s easy to find pairs of countries with about the same trust level but where one is more religious than the other. However, the Estonia-Israel comparison is a poor choice because Estonia has a communist past.
For the general association between trust and religiosity – however it’s conceptualized – take a look at my 2011 paper with Niclas Berggren: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268111001223

1.
The claim seems highly dependent on the way you conceptualize secularism. There seems to be something to it when considering the factors you mention here, but these all pertain to the level of secular values or direct participation in religious activities. If we turn to the more institutional conception of secularism, i.e. the role of religion within the state, I think the pattern seems almost reversed: The Nordic countries are still not very secular when it comes to the role of religion within the state. All countries still provide financial support for religious organizations (contrary to the US or France), and Denmark still retains its State Church (and the total separation of church and state I Norway is not complete yet).

2.
A number of countries with high trust levels are considerably more religious than the Nordics. Israel almost had the same level of trust as Estonia in 2011 (71 vs. 72), but 29,5 pct. of Israeli respondents in the ESS survey claimed to be very religious by your definition, and 10, 5 pct. attended religious service once a week. In the Netherlands, the trust level is also pretty high (80 vs. 84 in Sweden), and 18,9 pct. indicated to be very religious, with 7,1 pct. attending religious service.

So I would tend to be sceptical towards the notion that secularism has substantial bearing on e.g. trust, but maybe that was your point from the beginning? That trust, corruption and crime rates are not affected by either secularism or religiousness?

I did see a paper from the World Values Study (http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSPublicationsPapers.jsp), which seems to test some of the possible effects of secularism, but I haven’t read it fully.