It's important to remember here that religion and belief in God are not the same thing.
Why? And how so? Especially in an American context.
Because there are all sorts of aspects of religion that can't be summed up by "belief in God," (not to mention that religion is possible without belief in God).
Belief in God is something abstract, unless its qualified or contextualized. By itself, it doesn't make much of a difference in anything.
There are plenty of people who believe in God in some abstract sense but aren't religious. I think that's especially true in America.