Hi,
Anyone know how religious urban/democratic leaning America measues in religosity, compared to other developed parts of the world? I know that the US as a whole is more religious, but this does not tell me much because I’ve never lived in a conservative area of the country and have no plans to move to such an area. My own bubble in America is a Democratic/Urban society, which I suspect is roughly the same to Europe in atheism
This is something that’s hard to qualify; you’re not going to get a consistent agreement on even how to define “religiosity.”
If your benchmark is church attendance, I’d probably wager that Ireland’s, Poland’s and/or Italy’s figures are pretty close to those of the U.S. I don’t have a cite to back that up, BTW, I’m just guessing.
Several Canadian journalists writing of their experience in the USA said that religion plays a greater part in life there than here. One article I remember about Texas, the journalist said she had to make up whatever church she belonged to just to stop people asking that question, which denomination she was. She’d never been to a church then or since, but “church?” was what everyone asked. Of course, in LA or NYC, no such issues.
You can get a sense of what a country thinks about religion in general by how it figures in politics.
So, similarly, religion in politics seems to be much more prominent in the USA. I attribute the Canadian indifference to the fact that, given the proportion of French-Canadians, immigrants from places like the Phillipines, Italy and Portugal, Catholic is by far the largest denomination; plus Canada has a much higher immigrant population from Asia (east Indian and Chinese) who are not Christian. You don’t see articles on politicians’ faith, where or when they go to church, etc. - except the current prime minister who seems to be trying as hard as he can to convert us to the American political-religious trends,
Similarly, I don’t see much about european politicians and their religion - simply because many countries have one predominant religion, and unless the politician were, say, Mormon or scientologist, nobody would care which sect they belonged to. Even Northern Ireland, religion is just a code for ethnic extraction - Irish are catholic, English colonizers/immigrants are protestant. All over the first world, but especially for the catholic church which demands a heavy committment of its clergy, the levels of clergy and levels of church attendance are falling.
Plus, only the USA has such a strict prohibition on government having any role in religion. In Europe, religion has been part of the “establishment” for so long it has become part of the existing low-level class warfare, and prominent church leaders often earned the same enmity as rich aristocrats. The church, for example, was a persecuted as the nobles during the French Revolution. The pope was as reviled as the French or Spanish in England and other protestant countres that even went to war to prevent being overrun by catholic country forces. (Think Guy Fawkes…)
I think a good example of the differences is the existence of this thread. Nobody in Sweden would care enough about the subject to even pose the question.
Sweden has what, maybe 20 MPs from the Christian Democratic Party?
Does your “Urban & Democratic US” bubble include African Americans?
Yes, Kristdemokraterna has 19 out of 349, and still they make a point out of not being a religious party. It is difficult to talk about the “religosity” of “European parliaments” because the differences between different countries are huge.
The least religious states (as measured by weekly church attendence) are actually rural New England ones, not heavily urbanized ones. These are less religious then “Democratic” metropolisis like New York City for example.
Even these are more religious then many European Countries, though less religious then European Countries like Italy Poland and Ireland where the Catholic Church is still strong.
They do their best to profile themselves as a generally conservative party attracting christians, jews, irreligious, whatever.
Another point is that very few countries have the extremely strict prohibition of church actvities by the state that the USA has. As a result, things like “should the state allow a nativity scene in the local square” or “should the city allow a cross on the wall of the City Hall” are not matters for the courts. 50% of the local legislators would have to feel extremely incensed about it for things to be changed.
It’s just a name, like the “science” part in Christian Science.
Christian Democracy used to be a catchall term for socially conservative democratic socialism based on Christian principles. Now it’s a catchall term for socially conservative democratic socialism, Christian stuff optional.