Do you feel European governments meddle in their citizens’ religious business ? Because if you do, then I regret to have to tell you you feel wrong, at least as far as Europe west of the Balkans (and regrettably, north of Greece these days…) is concerned.
Besides, we don’t need no government to tell us people who claim to hear the voice of god almighty are too barmy to even listen to, let alone make them Congressmen or Presidents :).
Some developed countries are more religious than the US, others less so; the US lies somewhere towards the “more religious” end of that spectrum but is by no means an outlier.
A question that presupposes a clear difference between the US on the one hand and Europe on the other is doomed to lead to unsatisfactory and over-simplified attempts at explanation.
The wider (and very interesting) question is what factors influence the degree of religious belief and practice in a given culture or country, whether it be the US, South Korea, Poland or Australia.
I think a contributing factor might be uncertainty. The less control you have over your life, the more attractive the concept of a God figure who does have control and is benevolent.
Things like a strong social security net, more protected employment, better access to medical treatment without bankrupcy etc are all going to make religon less mentally neccessary.
I do not think it has anything to do with who emmigrated some centuries ago. The change is much more recent. Just some decades ago America was considered to be more open and liberal than other western countries. Then other countries have become more open while America has gone backwards. The question is why has America bocome more conservative? I suspect the reason has a lot to do with America’s decline on the world stage. Fifty years ago an American assembly line worker could enjoy a higher standard of living than an engineer in most of the rest of the world and Americans got used to the idea that they deserved this just by being Americans. Then the rest of the world started catching up and even surpassing America and, as usually happens, many thought the answer was to go back to fundamentals: old morality, militarism, sacrifice, etc. We have seen some posters on this board with that mentality. Go back to fundamentals.
Spain has a lot of immigration from South America and, unfortunately, they are bringing these evangelist and fundamentalists sects with them. I have had them knock on my door and they leave literature. They have TV channels which sound as ignorant as you can imagine. But it seems to give them a common ground is a foreign land and I am afraid these sects will keep growing. We really do not need that in Spain. It is North American ignorance imported to Spain using South Americans as carriers. The last thing we need.
Never underestimate Social and Cultural Pressure.
When everyone around you is a Cthulhuist, you’re either going to be a Cthuluist or you’re going to be an outsider. In Utah, even if you don’t believe, you’re likely to be a Mormon for social and cultural reasons. In the Southern US, you’re likely to be a Baptist for the same reasons. Hell, 25 years ago I spent six months in South Carolina and I cannot tell you how many times people asked me what church I went to, and expressed dismay or disapproval when I said ‘none’. If I had intended to live there long term and raise a family, I probably would have joined a church just for the social and cultural connections.
In Muslim countries, you are almost required to be a Muslim - it is the State Religion. I’m betting that a fair number of those people don’t actually believe (at least in the better educated and modernized nations), but besides the cultural and social reasons, you now have the Force of Law that says you are a Muslim and can be killed if at any point you decide you aren’t going to be one anymore. If that ended tomorrow and it became acceptable to become an Athiest (and you weren’t going to be blown up or decapitated for it), I’d bet at least 20% or more of the people would stop being “Muslim”.
Does this same social pressure exist in Europe? Or is the convention to be an Athiest? Or at least to keep your mouth shut about what you believe?
Agreed. No police officer in Europe would ever shoot a Brazilian because they though he was a Muslim.
So you’re saying that the police in France wouldn’t shoot someone to death threatening them with a knife?
Beyond that, having talked to Muslims in France, the UK, Germany, Italy, and one from Spain, and having spent some time there, I see no evidence that the police in Europe aren’t at least as brutal towards Muslim immigrants if not much worse.
One friend from Italy said, “Once in the station, discussions begin physically and get worse from there.”
I’m sorry, but this has to be one of the most poorly thought out arguments I’ve ever read on SDMB.
For starters, the US government doesn’t put barbed wire on the border to stop illegal immigrants from Mexico so the fact that Spain does is actually pretty compelling evidence that Spain is more xenophobic. Beyond that, if the US government ever did try something like that, the courts wouldn’t allow it and “bishops” certainly would speak out against it. Finally, to try and suggest that nearly everyone hated this policy is absurd considering the fact that Spain is a democratic government. Obviously there had to be at least some outcry against illegal immigrants and demands to crack down on them.
Now, if you really want to claim that xenophobia isn’t an issue in Europe and Wizard of Oz like insist that we pay no attention to the regular complaints and outcries we see against Turkish and North African immigrants we see in Europe, that has often included violence, then go ahead.
Those of us familiar with the anti-immigrant riots and various violence perpetrated by hate groups like the English Defense League will have a hard time taking such arguments seriously.
Since you’re bringing up Spain, I’ll note that a recent poll found that 64% of all Spaniards believed that Spanish Jews were more loyal to Israel than to Spain and that 74% thought that “Jews have too much power in international financial markets”. If anti-Semitism is that strong in Spain and other European countries, it’s pretty stupid to suggest that xenophobia isn’t an issue in such countries, particularly since anti-Turkish, anti-North African, and anti-Muslim sentiment is going to be even worse.
(warning PDF)
http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/israel-international/Public-ADL-Anti-Semitism-Presentation-February-2009-3.pdf
I should add, that I’m not trying to bash Europe in general or Spain in particular. Xenophobia and racism are a problem everywhere and truth be told I tend to think that Spanish culture, particularly in Latin America is more conducive to multi-culturalism than most European cultures. My point is trying to claim that xenophobia is vastly worse in the US is utterly absurd and grossly insulting to immigrants in both Europe and the US.
Pretty much this. People who claim that America is the most racist society on Earth are speaking from ignorance - a gross lack of knowledge about what goes on in the rest of the world.
Except really for Saudi Arabia that’s an exaggeration.
There are plenty of religious minorities in most Muslim countries and have been for centuries.
Obviously that doesn’t mean that being a Christian in Morocco or Egypt doesn’t have it’s problems and their treatment isn’t something that needs significant improvement, but they’re certainly not “required” to be Muslims.
Hell, what you’re saying is completely false even in Iran, which has Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians sitting in their parliament(again not to say they don’t face discrimination) and Iran is hardly a bastion of moderation.
Hence the ‘almost’ qualifier there, pal. 
But notice how your examples are all basically ‘registered religious minorities’?
In retrospect, this comment comes across far snarkier than intended. I’m sorry for that.
The point is that police brutality is a pretty universal concept, particularly when it comes to minorities whether ethnic Turks in Germany, Moroccans in Spain, Mexican-Americans in LA, or ethnic Koreans in Japan.
I’d also add that in many if not most European countries, the children of immigrants and sometimes even the grandchildren of immigrants aren’t automatically given citizenship.
Here in the US, we, with a few exceptions, would think it outrageous to NOT automatically grant citizenship to the children of immigrants.
How many Spanish politicians have been arguing for automatically granting citizenship to the children of Moroccans immigrants?
Are you under the impression that the Church of England is not just the largest church in the UK, but pretty well the only one? Because that’s not even nearly true. Most of my friends and family are atheist or close enough, but the ones who aren’t include Catholics, Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, Buddhists… and remarkably few C of E adherents.
I tend to agree. We’ve seen waves of religious revivals at various times in the US, and besides, we’ve have had most immigrants come here for economic reasons in the last 150 years.
Huh? “Some decades ago” (you reference 50 years ago, below) the US had Jim Crow laws, women had few opportunities in the workforce, and gays were sometimes arrested just for being gay. Now, you might argue that Europe became more liberal faster than the US, but to say that the US went “backwards” doesn’t make much sense to me. Can you clarify specifically what you mean?
Again, how are you measuring that the US is more conservative than it was 50 years ago? It may be more conservative than Europe is, but not more conservative that the US itself was, 50 years ago.
That was a huge screwup by the police and everybody recognized it as such. Measures were taken so it would not happen again. I do not think anyone would say this is representative of UK police. In America many people defend police shootings and you can see them in these forums.
How many police shootings and killings have there been in America per capita and how many in Europe? I can freaking guarantee the unbalance is huge.
How many per capita in France in the last five or ten years?
How many in the UK? How many in Spain?
How many in the USA? I have no doubt the number in the USA is much higher.
There are often threads about such police action and many Americans support such violent actions by police. In Spain I can tell you police shootings are few and far between.
Look how they deal with a guy wielding a knife.
They run around dodging him until they trip him.
More recently police were called to deal with a robber armed with a pistol and they managed to arrest him without firing their weapons.
In America police shoot first and ask questions later. And many Americans think this is the way it should be.
Any person who has dealt with American authorities knows what assholes they are. Just go to youtube and look at all the TSA or police videos. Europeans just do not have that kind of veneration for authority and do not believe citizens should live in obedience and fear of cops.
Look at the incarceration rates by country. List of countries by incarceration rate - Wikipedia
First on the list and way above than any other developed country: USA 716
Spain 149 (still high)
Sweden 67
Look at the list and tell me America is not more violent and very different. It is different regarding violence, guns, death penalty, police violence… To deny that is to deny the obvious.
Regarding xenophobia let me just say this: illegal immigrants in Spain are covered by government health care. In other words, illegal immigrants in Spain have better health coverage than many American citizens in America. And when the government tried to get rid of this due to pressure from the EU the doctors and local authorities refused and said immigrants would continue to be treated and covered. Americans don’t have this kind of compassion for their fellow Americans, much less for illegal immigrants. And the argument of “how much illegals cost us” is permanently on the table, including these boards.
Ah yes, Europe does have police shootings but “those don’t count, they’re screwups” :rolleyes:
Of course, you ignore that lots of Europeans have justified such brutality just as some Americans have justified such shootings in the US.
I have to say this is a rather comically bad argument.
It’s also a bit amusing hearing someone complain about American xenophobia who then casually mentions that in Spain the government was putting up barb wire to prevent illegal Moroccans for coming over, something that America doesn’t.
Beyond that, governmental services in the US from education to healthcare are available to illegal immigrants in America. Frankly, I’d rather be an illegal immigrant in the US then Spain where at least my children are automatically granted citizenship.
I notice you failed to answer my question so I’ll ask it again.
How many Spaniards are outraged by their government’s racist refusal to grant citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants?
Here in the US we recognize that refusing to automatically grant citizenship to someone born in the US is a disgusting human rights violation that no decent government would ever do.
Please name some Spanish politicians who’ve called for automatically granting citizenship to the children of immigrants and tell me how soon you think Spain will have amended their inhumane laws to allow this to happen.
Thanks
Beyond that, since you apparently want to handwave away anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant riots in much of Europe as well as handwaving away police brutality against Muslim and North African immigrants perhaps you can answer this for me.
How can you insist that xenophobia is so much worse in the US than Spain when 64% of all Spaniards think Spanish Jews are “more loyal to Israel than Spain” and when 74% agree with the statement “Jews have too much power in international financial markets”?
When Spain has such extreme anti-Semitism to say nothing of anti-Muslim bigotry, how can you say that xenophobia is much worse in the US.
Or, is your position that such statements aren’t bigoted?
Sorry, but to myself and people who’ve been to Europe and see how Europeans react with at least as much if not more venom at their own ethnic minorities an immigrants your comments seem to suggest a huge disconnect from reality.
The United States hasn’t “declined” or gone “backwards” since the 1950s unless you think legally sanctioned racial segregation, and institutionalized homophobia were good ideas. The US has moved leftwards on social issues just like most European countries have.
Let me double down on what John Mace said. This is absolutely not true. A conservative minority did learn that it could win political power by strategic concentration of numbers, but at their worst they want to keep a few aspects of history as it was 50 or 75 years ago and they’ve given up on trying to reinstall many far worse attitudes. The liberal change in my lifetime is utterly astounding.
You’re missing two major trends in American history. Maybe three. First, waves of fundamentalism wash across the country with great regularity. They are always restricted to a minority of the population but have consequences. Prohibition was an outgrowth of fundamentalism. That leads to the second major trend: tribalism. The tens of millions who came from all over Europe brought their customs and antagonisms with them and cities were fiefdoms and enclaves until assimilation finally hit. Prohibition was very much a battle between earlier Protestant immigrants and more recent Catholic immigrants. This led to a drastic restriction of immigration from the mostly Catholic European countries in the 1920s. That was at the same time as a wave of isolationism became paramount, a third trend that can be seen through most of American history and is emerging again today. Domestic concerns drove conservatism a dozen times more than foreign ones.
Yes, America has always been a violent country. And there is no national police force and no national standards of policing. We have literally tens of thousands of separate police forces and they are often brutal. But I doubt that they are more brutal than other police around the world. You can find an endless series of horror stories from any and every country with a click. And the almost unbelievable diversity of the country means that those who can be considered the Other create encounters constantly.
I think it’s terrific that other countries are gaining in freedoms and catching up to America. They may be ahead in some aspects, and good for them. But America has an immigrant tradition that is lacking in most other countries, and allows assimilation over time in a way that few have emulated. Demographics are already begin to limit fundamentalist political power. Countries in Europe and Asia are just starting to go through the waves of immigration and religious differences that are the norm in America and until they work through them - a generation or more - it will be worse for the Other in just about any country you can name than in America.
I think you seriously overestimate the amount of police shootings in Europe as a whole. For the whole of the UK in 2010 there was a grand total of 1 (one) police shooting. 2011 saw a shocking 100% rise to 2 (two) before settling back down to 1 again in 2012. How much scope is there for wrongful deaths with such low figures?
And Europe is not a single place, it is a collection of very different countries and cultures. I suspect the figures above will be different for other police forces (especially where they are routinely armed…unlike the UK) but I’d be very surprised if they approached the levels in the USA.
Errrr…how did this happen then?
In the USA the state also murders people on a regular basis, something that no decent european nation does and is a much more serious breach of human rights.
You seem very focussed on that particular point, I don’t see it as an issue. If you are an illegal immigrant and are up for deportation then why would the situation be different for your children just because they were born while their illegal immigrant parents were on the host nation soil?
Seems sensible to me, you get accepted, your kids are accepted, if not…bye-bye.
otherwise you’d have the ridiculous notion of parents being deported but children allowed to stay. Unless by granting citizenship to the children also confers in on the parents? Wonder what sort of incentive* that* would create?
Much of Europe? Friends anecdotes aside, where have you lived that you see such things? Or do you want to be a little more specific. I repeat…It does no help to consider Europe as a single entity. If you are happy to try that then we in “Europe” are justified in looking for pockets of racial tension and bigotry in the USA and painting the whole country with that broad brush.
Cite?
(No cite, but IME the immense majority of Spaniards would be extremely surprised to discover there are Spanish Jews).
Post #46.
BTW, I’m a bit confused by your above response to the question of citizenship to the children of immigrants.
Do you seriously support Spain’s policy of not automatically granting citizenship to people born there based on their parents’ nationality?
You seem to have dodged the question.
I apologize for the last sentence
I shouldn’t have put that in there.
I didn’t intend for the post to be nearly so confrontational.
Beyond that, I think you misunderstood what I was getting at.
I wasn’t bashing Europe in General or Spain in particular. I was merely pointing out the idea that Sailor was putting forth that somehow Europe wasn’t nearly as xenophobic as the US is demonstrably false and anyone who doubts this hasn’t talked to minorities in Europe.
That said, an earlier point was made. People will notice that religion is vastly more important to the immigrant communities in Europe and that does lead me to wonder if the waves of immigration in the US had something to do with the resiliency of religion in the US.
Perhaps in a couple of decades Europe will be far more religious than it is today.