Claiming that you're religious doesn't automatically makes you a bulwark of morality.

I'm speaking from my own experience here. A lot of people I've encountered in my life claimed (and still claim) to be religious but are only following their religion only when it's convinient to them. They simply don't practice what they preach and in my book they aren't true believers. In fact some of the nastiest people I've encountered were religious (or so they claim)