America Is A Really Christian Nation

I know the headline in this L.A. Times article about a recent Pew Survey "believed to be one of the most comprehensive snapshots of religious affiliation" was "More in U.S. jump to new faiths, poll finds" but it was the numbers that kind of shocked me.

• 51% of Americans are protestants
• 43% of people aged 18-29 are protestants
• 78.4% of Americans are Christians
• about 5% belong to other faith traditions
• 16.1% are unaffiliated with any religion.
• Secular unaffiliated Americans account for 6.3% of the population; religious unaffiliated, 5.8%; atheists, 1.6%; and agnostics, 2.4%.
• At 1.7% of the population, Jews make up the next-largest religious group. Buddhists are 0.7% of the population; Muslims 0.6%; and Hindus and New Age followers, both 0.4%.

78.4% seems like a HUGE number. I'm not sure how that compares to other "Western" countries, and I may look into that but out of 300 million people that's a hell of a lot of people

[UPDATe- even in Italy where it seemed everyone was Catholic and I saw more nuns and priest in like 6 months than I ever did in America, only 74% of people believe in God and if you care here is a list of Christians per country]