I don’t think you can lump all of the UK and Europe together for these purposes, some European countries are more religious than others, although it’s probably fair to say that across the board they’re all less religious than they once were.
In Britain, I think the general feeling is that we don’t mind other people being religious, but we get uneasy if they’re too zealous. Had Blair ever made some of the statements about Christ and religion that Bush has, most of us would be questioning his sanity and fitness as a leader.
Also, the church tax you pay ends up paying for your children’s baptism, your church wedding, your burial plot and funeral, among other things. In other words, you don’t need to worry about your funeral being paid for. Here in the Netherlands, they have insurances that you can use to pay for your funeral or cremation called an “uitvaartsverzekering” (literally: insurance for your shuffling off this mortal coil).
Much the same goes for Germany. Faith (as opposed to church affiliation) is considered an intimate matter and a public figure proclaiming his/her faith would be about as embarassing as that public figure proclaiming his/her love of her spouse.
I don’t mean to press the point, but it doesn’t sound like an intimate matter to me. Not if you’re forced to declare your religion. Whatever happened to tithing? And how are the church and the state kept separate if the state subsidizes the church? Maybe it’s the case that such separation is uniquely American, but if so then it’s hard to know what religion even means in Germany. Or charity, for that matter. If I give money to Governer Smith, and he gives a portion of it to Father Jones, who in turn gives a portion of it to Bum Brown, and each step in the process incurs administrative cost, why didn’t you just make me give Bum Brown his due and let me keep the rest for myself? As someone who has a keen interest in both political and religious philosophy, this is all very confusing to me, I must say.
Norway still has a state church (Lutheran); if memory serves, Denmark does as well, but Sweden recently disestablished theirs. Well over 90% of the population in each country identifies as Lutheran, but church attendance is quite low. Most Norwegians I know, whether Lutheran or otherwise, see the inside of a church for baptisms, confirmations, weddings, and funerals, and perhaps for Christmas Eve though not every year. (At home, they will of course sing songs about the Baby Jesus that night whether they go to church or not.) Of course, this is because most of the Norwegians I know are city folks, and generally young- through middle-aged adults.
All the Scandinavian countries have their more religious areas; in Norway, the west country and particularly the southwest are known for higher church attendance and just in general more people for whom religious is a major part of their lives. When Stavanger became Norway’s “oil capital” and suddenly found itself full of oilmen, it was something of a shock for the local population
As for the “New Age and occult ideas”, perhaps the problem is that your church defines these differently than I do. Some small number of people participate in a worship that they believe resurrects the pre-Christian beliefs of Scandinavia. A small number have joined neo-pagan or New Age faiths. A tiny, tiny number describe themselves as “Satanists”, but what this involves other than p*ssing off Christians, getting into violent fights and setting fire to historic buildings is rather unclear :rolleyes: Add all of those together and I still think you’ll find more people in Norway’s churches on any given Sunday morning.
The simple truth is that for most people, particularly in the cities, religion is just not all that important to their everyday lives.
Well, okay, I can understand that. It does, however, make me extremely suspicious now of studies that purport to make some statement about religious trends in Europe. I have always taken these studies to mean that Europeans had lost their faith. Joke’s on me, I guess.
The OP can be exactly answered by the 2001 UK Census results, which give an overall figure of irreligiousosity of about 15%. I was shocked this was so low, given the low rate of church attendance. About 75% of the UK population claim to be Christian, but mostly, it seems, in a not-talking-about-it-or-going-to-church kind of way.
I’m a regular church-going Catholic in London. The services are usually very well attended.
But in my experience, the congregations are generally made up of immigrants and the children of immigrants. In my current parish in Ealing it seems to be mostly Irish and Polish with a few from Asia and the Caribbean thrown in. There are not really all that many English Catholics, although there are certain places where the Reformation seems to have had a lesser effect, such as the North-West.
In the Irish census of 2002, out of a total population of 3,917,203, there were 3,462,606 Catholics - just over 88%.
Oh, and the people who put their religion down as “Jedi” on the UK 2001 Census form are all liars and eejits, and were only doing what had previously been done for a laugh in New Zealand.
I can only speak for Britain, but here we have nothing explicitly expressing the separation of church and state, as far as I’m aware. In many ways the two are entwined - the monarch is the Defender of the Faith, appointments to important roles within the church often have political overtones, and so on. Yet religious leaders have very little influence over policy, far less than in America, where as I understand it the religious right have considerable political power.
The best way I can describe it is that in the UK we’ll allow our religious leaders a certain amount of political power, so long as they don’t attempt to exercise it!
There’s an interesting article on this subject here
Thanks, Jennyrosity, that was an interesting article indeed. The separation in the US is merely a mandate, the enforcement of which depends upon the whims of governers.
And Paul, surely you’re whooshing us. The chapel. The foppish archbishop. The reading from Corinthians. Elton John with no bling…
> Yet religious leaders have very little influence over policy, far less than in
> America, where as I understand it the religious right have considerable political
> power.
Yes . . . and no. It’s easy to get the impression that any given person who’s quoted a lot in news stories from the U.S. and appears in TV news giving impassioned speeches a lot has significant power. Many of those religious leaders have as many people who despise them as are influenced by them.
Except, as far as I can tell, the only country that has a church tax like that is Germany, and it’s had it since 1949, so you can still look at religious trends in Germany since 1949, and also religious trends in Europe outside Germany.
Here’s an analysis of the Kirschensteuer by the International Journal of Not for Profit Law:
I have got the (possibly erroneous) impression that many George Bush’s campaigns and policies are heavily influenced by own his religious beliefs, and by those of the majority of his supporters.
They are indeed, but George Bush is President of the US, not King. He can has to share power with Congress & the Supreme Court, and state and local governments.
Yes, I understand that. But the impression I have is that religious beliefs are given far greater precedence by both national and state government then would ever be tolerated in the UK. Indeed, in many cases it seems to be not so much tolerated as expected.
The monarch in Britain has no real power, btw. They can (and in the case of Prince Charles, often do) offers opinions on state policy, but have no power to enforce their views.
Yup. The monarch has power in name only- for example, the winner of the general election will be “invited” by the Queen to form a government, but if she didn’t, we’d just get on with it anyway. The traditional powers are still in place nominally, we just ignore them.
And I seem to have the same view as Jenny on Bush’s religiousness; if a candidate brought up and made an issue of his/her religion to the same extent that Bush does, they wouldn’t get voted in. We still want to know their religion, though, because it is in most cases a religious person’s duty to act a certain way and put emphasis on certain things, and thus it’s going to have an affect on their policies and style of governorship.
