But even in countries with a state-sanctioned church, aren’t there still boundless options to choose from (I’m assuming a Western-style country here, not Iran)?
Yeah, most of which were invented in America,. 
But it’s not just the state sanctioning, it’s the state financing. Makes it harder to compete.
There are, but most people default to the state church and people belonging to other churches are kind of regarded as fundies(though by US standards they’re probably just average church goers).
But we knew that, didn’t we? It’s the guiding assumption when dealing with other people.
Iran is hardly homogenous religiously and officially recognizes not just Muslims(both Sunni and Shia) but Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians.
Obviously being a Bahai is extremely dangerous.
That’s certainly what De Tocqueville believed IIRC.
I suspect many Muslim immigrants in Norway would probably disagree.
You’ll notice Bruckner’s link regarding the Swedes pointed to Muslim and other non-Christian immigrants being the impetus for Sweden’s decision in 2000 to sever the Church state connection.
I was happy to hear that. Now if only the Canadians, Brits and Australians would follow.
Also, what “long history” does the US have of “state persecution of various religious groups”?
The only thing I can think of was the Mormons and the treatment of various Indian tribal religions, but that was due to race not religion.
Called a Baha’i minister/mullah/whatever the other day. While he was not extremely dangerous (that I know) he was less pleasant than I expected.
AFAIK none of those have a state church. Not even the “Brits,” but England does. That means not the rest of Britain: not Wales, NI, or Scotland (and the CoS is Presbyterian, anyway). Yes, the Queen is the head of the Church of England, but it is not in that regard that she is also the head of state of many countries. Although I wouldn’t doubt that people think her being on the money is idolatry.
A writer at Vanity Fair does sort of sum it up nicely:
I co-authored a book on vaccines published by a reputable publisher. Here’s the latest review from exactly that kind of idiot:
Do you know how many times my co-author and I have been personally accused of being funded by pharmceutical companies? Despite the fact that neither one of us has ever worked for them? This is the sort of paranoid, stupidity I constantly run into on this topic. Every single time an article on vaccines gets published the idiots come out to make dumb comments.
And while it is true that over nine out of ten parents vaccinate, a significant number will skip or delay vaccination despite there being no evidence that such a delay will help their children. It’s not just the United States. Wales is currently in the middle of a huge outbreak of measles because of non-vaccination.
Please let’s not pretend that Iran has an expansive, tolerant and accepting view towards religions other than Islam.
No, 1/3 of americans are not absolute morons. I have a few friends who agree with the proposed sentiment, and they are engineers, teachers, and generally successful. In other words, not complete morons.
They just believe what the church tells them more than people who say otherwise. So you, Monty are not doing anyone any favors here. A more appropriate title might be “1/3 of americans just don’t get it!”
They did, and once they got to North America they legislated religion to a far greater extent that in England.
Judging by Europe it would seem that the most effective way to turn the masses away from religion is to establish a state church.
Australia does have seperate of church & state, at least at the federal level. In theory a state could establishe a state church, but none have ever done so. IIRC the Church of England was technically the established church in the early NSW colony, but that ended at the insistence of Anglican clergy who wanted independence from civil authorities.
In the UK only England and Scotland have (their own) state churches. Canada also has seperation of church & state, except for the odd government-run Roman Catholic school in some provinces. Quebec as gotten highly secular since the 1960s.
So, if there was an official state religion in the US (probably on a state-by-state basis) would American culture not dictate an elective office for its leadership? For instance, would the people vote for a candidate for Archbishop of Nebraska every couple years?
It must be all those welfare-loving Americans. All Scandinavian countries have or had until recently a state church. The state church of Denmark was established specifically to minimize the role of religion in politics. Compare to the USA it worked fine.
Engineers and teachers, or any other lay profession, does not require people to believe all the time. I’m sure your successful engineering friends are not praying to an entity when they’re designing a new, low-emissions engine. They are relying on the real number one in their lives: themselves, and the lay-education that taught them to do it.
Equating religious belief to success seems like equating regular bowel movements to success.
No one is equating anything. All the guy is doing is making the same statement Thudlow Boink made. You cannot tell by one moronic belief if someone is a moron.
And if you don’t like Christians saying that you aren’t really an atheist and that atheism isn’t a religion, you might want to refrain from saying they believe only in themselves and not in God.
Actually, professions like biologist and doctor and many others do, depending on the religion. Engineers for example tends towards religion far more than biologists (thus my example); religion is very intrusive about biology, but much less likely to make pronouncements about engineering. Outside of the occasional Christian insisting that pi = 3.
Or Satanism. Or both at once.
Really? There were numerous Muslim protests against Lutheranism in Sweden before 2000? There was a strong Muslim movement to de-nationalize the church?
Which, I suspect, was carried out in the typical Scandinavian manner of simply looking around, deciding that the majority nominal-Lutherans were no longer getting much out of their “official” church, and deciding to drop the whole thing so that their fellow countrymen would feel more comfortable.
The federal government has not done much active persecution, but it tolerated states doing all manner of things. New York, at one time, banned Catholic priests from wearing clerical garb in public. For over fifty years, Massachusetts required that every man belong to a church and permitted each church to levy its own taxes on its members for support. No specific church was named, but the majority Congregationalists “collected” anyone who could not point to membership in a different church. Several states had official churches that had a say in the government. A couple of states had laws into the mid nineteenth century prohibiting Papists, Jews, “Mohammedans” and others from holding public office. (And apprentices were required to attend church with their masters, regardless of the church that master or apprentice attended.) Schools conducted religious classes using the KJV bible, following whichever Protestant denomination happened to have the most political clout in the city. (Catholic neighborhoods were burned and people murdered when Catholics expressed the desire to use the Douai-Rheims translation rather than the KJV.) Limits were set on the number of Jews or Catholics who could attend colleges, even public schools. Similar rules were established to prevent Jews and Catholics from buying houses in various cities. (Such rules were not set at the federal level, but they were tolerated by the federal government until the mid 1960s.)
Does the U.S. have a history of state-initiated pogroms or federal persecution? No.
However, “state persecution” has occurred and would probably resume if freed from the constraints of the Constitution as currently construed.
All of them have some levels of the co-mingling of Church and State.