Religious America...why?

[ralph124c]

@John_Bredin

On the “Has the US always been really religious?” question, I was struck while reading another thread on SDMB – this one – where it was mentioned that people protested or objected to, and then someone defaced, whimsical depictions of the “north wind” (essentially, a cloud with a human face puffing a breath) in the concrete work of a highway project in Lubbock, Texas, because they perceived it as pagan idolatry.

By contrast, in the 1930s the Chicago Burlington and Quincy railroad introduced a new train called the Zephyr after the Greek god of the west wind. They promoted the heck out of it, as they were trying to keep ridership up during the Great Depression.

But they didn’t just name the trains (the original Zephyr was a smash success and had several successors) after a relatively obscure Greek god that admittedly would not show up on the radar of all but the most easily-offended even today. (After all, there are still Zephyr trains, there’s a Zephyr automobile, etc.) They had newspaper and magazine ads with a crowd of Greek gods and goddesses hovering over the Zephyr trainsets. They called one Zephyr trainset the Train of the Gods and named its cars Apollo, Mars, Neptune, Cupid, Vulcan, Mercury, and Jupiter. A matching train was called the Train of the Goddesses with its cars named Venus, Vesta, Minerva, Psyche, Ceres, Diana, and Juno. In short, they played the Greco-Roman gods schtick to the hilt, in the 1930s, apparently without significant fear of getting tons of bad publicity for “promoting pagan idolatry.” I can imagine the websites, radio-talk-show chatter, and general kerfuffle if a company nowadays used the same schtick in its marketing. :eek: I was honestly surprised the first time I saw the gods-hovering-over-the-Zephyr ad in a book, in a “wow, they had the nerve to go there!” way.

I’m a bit skeptical-Ford Motor Co. used the name for a line of cars, up till 1950 or so.
What’s so offensive about “Zephyr”?

[MsRobyn]

@ralph124c

I’m a bit skeptical-Ford Motor Co. used the name for a line of cars, up till 1950 or so.
What’s so offensive about “Zephyr”?

Nothing, except in the minds of people who go looking for things to be offended by. (BTW, the Ford Zephyr was produced until 1972 by Ford of England, and it’s been a Lincoln badge since 2006; the “Z” in “MKZ” stands for Zephyr.)

There are a lot of people who believe that anything that they don’t agree with is offensive, and that includes anything that isn’t part of their religion. Some people only take personal offense, while others feel it’s their mission to stamp out idolatry wherever it rears its ugly head to spare their fellow citizens from such immorality.

To some extent, the Internet is responsible for the increase in such stupidity. It costs nothing to start a Facebook page, a blog, or a website to attract like-minded (I use the term “minded” loosely here.) people. Once this happens, one person with a beef magically turns into a lot more. And since the Internet is relatively anonymous, one person can turn into a movement by starting sock accounts; who’s going to know that the thousands-strong Committee to Stamp Out Immorality is really just John Smith and a few of his friends?

[Thudlow_Boink]

@elbows

While it was indeed the refuge for the religiously oppressed, who longed to practice is freedom, whatever their faith, there was never the less a deeply held respect for Christianity and their God. It is in all of their language, and those underlying Christian principals shaped a lot of policy for a lot of years. Birth control, abortion, women’s rights, etc.

I think, what we are really hearing, is the howling of a dying beast. Of course everything is an affront, (gay marriage, don’t ask, don’t tell, contraception), if you’ve enjoyed having your Christian beliefs enshrined in the law for a hundred or more years.

It’s not clear to me at what point the issues you mention became specifically religious issues, or were thought of as based on specifically Christian principles.

What they do have in common is that they’re all related to sex or sexuality. They’re more fundamentally sexual issues than they are religious issues. Which raises the question of why those are the issues we think about when we think about “religious America,” and why those are the issues that conservative Christians—who seem to be the noisiest religious Americans—are noisiest about.

[John_Bredin]

@ralph124c

I’m a bit skeptical-Ford Motor Co. used the name for a line of cars, up till 1950 or so.
What’s so offensive about “Zephyr”?

It wasn’t just Zephyr as the train name – as I said, that could easily get past even the most sensitive offend-o-meter because it’s obscure. It was the whole Greco-Roman gods theme that the Burlington ran with in the '30s that I was surprised didn’t create a shitstorm. An ad with a whole passel of gods and goddesses hovering over a train isn’t obscure. A train called the Train of the Gods with all its cars named after Greco-Roman gods isn’t obscure. Some hyper-religious people would call that “putting God to the test” – or “tempting the fates” if they didn’t get the irony of the latter.

[kenobi_65]

@John_Bredin

It wasn’t just Zephyr as the train name – as I said, that could easily get past even the most sensitive offend-o-meter because it’s obscure. It was the whole Greco-Roman gods theme that the Burlington ran with in the '30s that I was surprised didn’t create a shitstorm. An ad with a whole passel of gods and goddesses hovering over a train isn’t obscure. A train called the Train of the Gods with all its cars named after Greco-Roman gods isn’t obscure. Some hyper-religious people would call that “putting God to the test” – or “tempting the fates” if they didn’t get the irony of the latter.

I suspect that, in the 20s and 30s, Greco-Roman symbolism / imagery wasn’t entirely uncommon. I’ve seen old stock certificates, bas-relief decorations on buildings, etc., which used it. Moving forward a few decades, many of the U.S.'s missiles and rockets in the 1950s and 1960s (not to mention the three major U.S. manned space programs) were named after Greco-Roman gods.

My suspicion is that, at that time, they were simply seen as symbols of, and references to, a long-dead culture. I don’t know to what extent modern paganism was even on the radar screens of most conservative Christians of those eras.

[BigT]

My U.S. History teacher in college actually started with the Protestant Revolution, saying that schools rarely teach the religious aspects of our history, and he thought that was a shame.

If only he’d been a better teacher, i might have something to say that hasn’t already been said on the subject. My main reason for posting is that I’m confused why people thought it was weird the last time I posted it.

[Surreal]

Here’s some data from the latest World Values Survey. This is the percentage of people that consider religion to be “very important” in life (n=78,467):

Country	Total	Very important

France 997 (100%) 13.00%
Great Britain 1026 (100%) 21.00%
Italy 999 (100%) 34.40%
Netherlands 1010 (100%) 12.50%
Spain 1195 (100%) 14.90%
United States 1240 (100%) 47.40%
Canada 2152 (100%) 32.00%
Japan 972 (100%) 6.50%
Mexico 1551 (100%) 59.00%
South Africa 2973 (100%) 70.30%
Australia 1399 (100%) 19.50%
Norway 1025 (100%) 10.50%
Sweden 998 (100%) 9.30%
Argentina 992 (100%) 33.40%
Finland 1010 (100%) 17.60%
South Korea 1199 (100%) 21.20%
Poland 988 (100%) 47.80%
Switzerland 1236 (100%) 17.20%
Brazil 1498 (100%) 50.60%
Chile 992 (100%) 39.90%
India 1934 (100%) 51.40%
Slovenia 1023 (100%) 15.30%
Bulgaria 973 (100%) 18.90%
Romania 1748 (100%) 58.00%
China 1485 (100%) 6.70%
Taiwan 1227 (100%) 12.40%
Turkey 1344 (100%) 74.70%
Ukraine 963 (100%) 18.30%
Russian Federation 1939 (100%) 13.70%
Peru 1486 (100%) 49.60%
Uruguay 990 (100%) 22.80%
Ghana 1525 (100%) 90.40%
Moldova 1044 (100%) 31.80%
Georgia 1487 (100%) 80.20%
Thailand 1526 (100%) 56.30%
Indonesia 1999 (100%) 94.70%
Viet Nam 1478 (100%) 7.20%
Serbia 1201 (100%) 25.70%
New Zealand 915 (100%) 17.30%
Egypt 3050 (100%) 95.40%
Morocco 1199 (100%) 90.60%
Iran 2659 (100%) 78.50%
Jordan 1199 (100%) 94.50%
Cyprus 1039 (100%) 54.10%
Iraq 2687 (100%) 96.10%
Guatemala 999 (100%) 83.30%
Hong Kong 1218 (100%) 5.30%
Trinidad and Tobago 999 (100%) 76.80%
Andorra 1000 (100%) 8.00%
Malaysia 1200 (100%) 80.50%
Burkina Faso 1506 (100%) 84.30%
Ethiopia 1492 (100%) 81.00%
Mali 1497 (100%) 90.20%
Rwanda 1504 (100%) 38.90%
Zambia 1463 (100%) 77.50%
Germany 2017 (100%) 11.20%
** Total 78467 (100%) 49.10%**

As you can see, by this metric the US is about average in terms of religiosity.

[JRDelirious]

@Surreal

Here’s some data from the latest World Values Survey. This is the percentage of people that consider religion to be “very important” in life (n=78,467):
[…]
As you can see, by this metric the US is about average in terms of religiosity.

But most of the countries show a large deviation away from that “average” number in either direction, rather than clustering in a peak around it. And look at the distribution among socioeconomic comparables – Established Industrial Western European/Pacific Rim nations, Canada – On that metric the US has them beat by a mile.

The percentage for the US most closely matches Poland’s, and is in a league with “emergent” countries such as India and Brazil. Not what you’d predict from the distribution for other socioeconomically and culturally comparable societies.

[madmonk28]

That data shows that America’s attitudes are more in line with the developing world than with most of the West. When people talk about religious America, they are mostly talking about Red State America where religion is king, this does represent about half the country, though.

[Imasquare]

@Shakester

You’re forgetting - as you damned northern hemispherians so often do - Australia and New Zealand.

Au & NZ themselves were never in any danger during WW1 - though we joined in at the start and not three years later like the yanks. (Also, it ended in 1918, not 1917.)

Aside from Darwin, Broome, and a few minor attacks elsewhere, Australia certainly wasn’t devastated by WW2, and as far as I know NZ didn’t suffer a scratch.

Yet both countries are among the least religious nations on Earth. 100 years ago Au & NZ were just as religious as the UK and continental Europe, so the loss of faith can’t be attributed to the devastation caused by the world wars. It’s not “the US vs Europe” - it’s “the US vs the rest of the developed world”.

Basically everywhere that used to be “Christendom” is now mostly Apathist. Except the USA.

Not just the USA. In South Korea there seems to be a church on every block. Each church has a red neon cross on it and looking out the window at night reveals a lot of red neon crosses.

It is even evident on the subway - I saw a wandering preacher on a subway train dressed like Colonel Sanders. He was singing, reading from the bible and handing out religious literature. The one thing he did not do was ask for money from anyone.

According to this article religion is on the decline in the USA:

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2011/11/24/the-religion-of-an-increasingly-godless-america/

Even though it is apparently on the decline I suspect that it seems so much more prominent these days because the Republican party has become dominated by religious activists.

[Nava]

@Shakester

Also, and not something I know much about, but my understanding of everything south of the USA is that it’s heavily Catholic. Is that the case?

I mean Catholic in a religious sense, not just “culturally Catholic” but actual church-going believers. Do the south-of-the-USA countries have a comparable level of religiousness to the US or are they more secular in practice?

Nominally yes, but there’s aspects which many USAnian Catholics would repudiate (Hispanics are heavily into Marianism, which is less common in the US); also, the social aspects are completely different from USAnian ones, from places where having mistresses is pretty much expected of any man with the money for it, to others where the population is more likely to pray during a soccer match than during Mass, to Teología de la Liberación. Many locations follow the traditional pattern where women are a lot more church-going than men; I’ve been to places where the guys would leave the church during the sermon for a smoke, something which used to be common in Spain pre-Vatican II.

What it means to be “a church-going Catholic” in the US and what it means south of the Río Grande are different things.

[Nava]

Out of time:
What it means to be “a church-going Catholic” in the US and what it means south of the Río Grande are different things, same as what it means to be Catholic form the point of view of someone who self-identifies as Catholic and what it means to someone looking in is different (non-Catholic tend to believe we’re a block of obsidian - it’s more along the lines of sandstone).

When my parishes in Miami asked for people to take certain roles in Mass, I tried to offer, but they wanted so much paperwork and meetings and whatnot I had to let it go (you need to attend two weekly meetings in order to be able to perform a reading? you’re kidding me! uh, no? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, b… ok, sorry, sorry! no, no, don’t worry, I’m leaving now and won’t offend you with my presence again); in Spain, Italy or Latin America it’s more a matter of “if you offer, the priest may ask you a couple of questions before giving you the go ahead” (I have never offered in Portugal or France but I understand they’re similar). The USanian priests I met who had this second mindset were: Portuguese, Spaniard, Cuban, Mexican-American, Filipino… the “American-American” ones seemed to have much more rigid definitions to go with their more rigid practices.

[robert_columbia]

I, for one, welcome our new ultra-religious overlords…wait…oh, nevermind.

[astorian]

@Nava

Nominally yes, but there’s aspects which many USAnian Catholics would repudiate (Hispanics are heavily into Marianism, which is less common in the US); also, the social aspects are completely different from USAnian ones, from places where having mistresses is pretty much expected of any man with the money for it, to others where the population is more likely to pray during a soccer match than during Mass, to Teología de la Liberación. Many locations follow the traditional pattern where women are a lot more church-going than men; I’ve been to places where the guys would leave the church during the sermon for a smoke, something which used to be common in Spain pre-Vatican II.

What it means to be “a church-going Catholic” in the US and what it means south of the Río Grande are different things.

Also worth mentioning: the days when you could assume that Latin American Christians were Catholic are long gone.

Evangelical Protestants have won a lot of converts in Central and South America.

[Bibliothecarius]

@Shakester

Also, and not something I know much about, but my understanding of everything south of the USA is that it’s heavily Catholic. Is that the case?

I mean Catholic in a religious sense, not just “culturally Catholic” but actual church-going believers. Do the south-of-the-USA countries have a comparable level of religiousness to the US or are they more secular in practice?

I can’t comment on the religiousity or otherwise of Central and South American countries, but whatever the answer is would probably also be affected by why those countries are predominantly Catholic in the first place. American Catholics, for instance, choose to be Catholic and their ancestors came here in order to practise Catholicism freely. Latin America, on the other hand, is largely Catholic because the Spanish and Portuguese missionaries came along and forced it upon the “poor, lost savages” as if it were their duty to save these native heathens from eternal damnation. Historically speaking, the difference is one of being Catholic by choice, or Catholic by conquest, which would probably have some effect on how fervent or not Latin American Catholics are. As well as the fact that Latin America is nowhere near as religiously diverse as North America so they probably don’t get as much exposure to different religious options.

[Nava]

@astorian

Also worth mentioning: the days when you could assume that Latin American Christians were Catholic are long gone.

Evangelical Protestants have won a lot of converts in Central and South America.

Yeah, but the differences are more nominal than one might expect. Often the mixture of Catholicism-based traditions and Evangelical beliefs leads to something which is more similar to your average Hispanic Catholic than to the USanian Evangelicals. The USanians wouldn’t name one child Ignacio de Loyola and another María de la Caridad del Cobre (Mary of Charity of Copper - after Cuba’s patron saint) or Rocío (after the image of Our Lady which receives the biggest collective pilgrimage in Spain), whereas Evangelicals from Spain or Latin America will, and then inform you in complete seriousness that they don’t believe in intermediaries. I’ve met Spanish Evangelicals who were in a complete frothy fret about being able to see the Pope… much happier about it than the majority of Spanish Catholics.

Bibliothecarius, your answer sounds as if you think everybody who lives south of the Río Grande is an exclusive descendant of those “poor, lost savages”. Most people have a mixture of bloodlines, with “white” and “red” being the most common ones but not the only ones.

[monavis]

@Napier

I think it’s driven by Republican strategy. The GOP encourages it and benefits by disproportionate voting from Evangelicals. Seriously. I think one of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism developed the idea convincingly.

It would seem that both Matthew C16(,and Mark) would make the Book of Revelations Null and Void. If Jesus would have returned in his father’s glory with his angels,while some of the people standing there listening to him were still alive then the second coming would have been in that century. Jesus didn’t return in Glory or with any angels, and there are no 2000+ people living today, Nor did the Sun lose it’s light, the moon turn to blood etc. in that generation as Matthew( C 24) wrote that Jesus told them would happen. Matthew also stated tha there were 14 generations between David and Jesus, so the word Generation would mean the same as now!

[Trinopus]

@Shakester

How are Australia and New Zealand not New World? They’re both newer (to European-derived civilisation) than the Americas. The Wikipedia article supports my usage of the phrase, at least “sometimes”.

The meaning of the phrase “new world” is as opposed to the “old world” of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Clearly, by that definition, Au and NZ are new world nations.

Well, Wikipedia adds “…and sometimes Oceania (Australasia.)”

But nearly everyone uses “The New World” to mean North and South America. (I don’t know if Chinese navigators ever got to Australia or New Zealand, but they certainly could have, whereas they never even came close to North America’s west coast.)

Blame it on Columbus…

[An_Arky]

Because the wide open spaces in our hinterlands are only surpassed by the gaps in their residents’ synapses.

[Clothahump]

@ralph124c

I am puzzled by the people who attend these “mega churches”-it seems to me that these services are mostly just harangues by a wealthy guy who calls himself a minister.
It seems more akin to going to a shopping mall-the sermons are quite banal-especially a guy like Joel Osteen. To me, a religious person is one who actually attempts to live according to the doctrines espoused.
But I guess (in Osteen’s case), its basically “feel good about yourself”..and little else.

Osteen is a snake-oil salesman. He inherited a church and a following from his daddy, who was also a snake-oil salesman. He’s done a pretty good job of marketing his church as being the social place to see and be seen, and he’s making a killing off of it.