Why has religious belief eroded in Europe but not the United States?

Great Debates
141

Based solely on what I’m reading here, I would say there are some serious differences.

It might be that French police is as disliked as American police, but it wouldn’t occur to me not to open quickly the glove compartment and search in it when stopped on the road by the police, for instance. I would similarly find outrageous some precautions apparently taken routinely (according to what I read here) by US police.

Basically, I would be affraid of American police because they seem incredibly more trigger happy than any police I’m accustomed to. I can’t feel safe when facing someone who might open fire at the drop of a hat because I didn’t keep my hands on the wheel, or I seemed to be holding something, or I seemed to not obey immediately to some random order shouted from a distance or something.

For comparison, two years ago or so, French police in the Paris area fired about 20 shots. Reasonnably assuming several shots for each incident, that’s a handful of occurences every year for 10 millions people. I read recently here similar figures for Germany. And ordinary police officers in the UK don’t even carry weapons at all.

You could say that there’s more violence in the USA, hence that the behavior of US police is understandable, but :

  1. I’m simply not convinced. I strongly suspect that US police is much more trigger happy than necessary, even considering a higher overall level of violence. Also, it seems (again, from what I read here) that they get away with it way too easily when shit happens.

  2. More to the point : even if justified, it wouldn’t make me any less warry of US police. It’s absurd that it would even cross your mind during some random interaction with the police that it could potentially be a life or death situation and that you must behave cautiously as a result.

142

While the Pilgrims were certainly a splinter group, it’s probably inaccurate to say they were a ‘cult’ as we usually define it today. There was no head Pilgrim who dominated the lives and believes of the congregation. The group had religious and later secular leaders when the established a colony, but none of them exerted or tried to exert anywhere near the the kind of influence you’d associate with a cult leader. No leader claimed any special revelation or any kind of special spiritual superiority over the group.

Also, most of the colonial settlements in the future US were established for non-religious reasons or very quickly lost their original religious purpose (e.g. Maryland). The settlements in the south, were religion is strongest today, were set up to make money not for any religious reason.

143

So the Wikipedia definition counts, but not the thefreedictionary.com one? Why is that?

Let me guess: Because that’s the one you prefer? Because you, too, like to pick and choose among all the different possible definitions out there? Because, to be quite blunt, in that regard, you’re no better than me?

A “few instances” wouldn’t prove what “most atheists” believe. Plural, anecdote, data, you know.

And really now, “anytime the question is asked”? Anytime? Anytime, as in every time? That’s just not true. There are atheists who, when asked that exact question - “why do you care if you don’t believe, why can’t you let it be” - would answer that “but I do not care; I do ‘let it be’; I do not have any kind of ‘problem’ with religion, it’s just that I myself am not religious; I am not an anti-atheist, I am an atheist, an a-theist, which simply means that I do not believe in a god or any gods, not that I have a problem with religion, organized or not.”

Let’s call 'em the, uh, “non-opposed atheists.” Yeah, let’s call 'em that. As in, while they do not share religious belief, they are not opposed to religious belief, either.

Whether these “non-opposed atheists” are in a majority or in a minority, I will openly admit that I do not know - I do not have the data necessary to make any such claim, except for a few anecdotes here and there, personal experience etc., which obviously doesn’t count for much and can’t be used to prove jack shit. But I do know that they’re out there.

See, atheism, like religion, comes in many forms - just like all religion isn’t organized, not all atheism has a problem with religion.

144

No, to the children of foreign residents whose government says that’s not going to be a problem. That’s a bilateral treaty.

145

It’s highly useful to have terms distinguishing between different types of belief. The experiences and worldview of someone who believes what you sketched out above (vague spirituality with no formal doctrine, clergy, church, or even worship) are very different from a devout Catholic, Muslim, Orthodox Jew, etc. Yes, all have religious beliefs (for some definitions of ‘religion’), but reducing it down to a binary yes-or-no for religious belief is clumsy, and not particularly useful. There are real, meaningful differences between different types of beliefs and believers.

146

Your post reminded me of the Ingmar Bergman movie “Winter Light”-where the pastor is preaching to empty churches, and realizes he doesn’t believe in what he preaches.

147

Yeah, that’s what I’ve been saying all along: Religion is an extremely broad category, and within it, there is a lot of variety.

And it is indeed highly useful to have terms distinguishing between different types of religiosity.

148

Not only Church of Sweden. This used to be a Salvation Army church. I have also been to a village civic centre in Scotland that used to be a church and there is an ex church in York that serves as a restaurant.

149

What a terrible post. Part of the reason strong nationalism is so frowned upon in Europe is because it resulted in two world wars and multiple genocides. I’d argue Americans have remained more nationalistic because we’ve never gone fucking crazy with it. Europeans have, and it’s probably good they don’t dabble in it at all anymore.

150

I’ve always wondered where this completely ahistorical drivel comes from. I think I see it on these boards probably weekly.

There were thirteen major colonies settled by people from Great Britain on the Atlantic seaboard of North America. What you’re talking about are the Puritans who settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony–who are in fact only part of what became the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691. The Puritans were religious extremists who wanted to impose their views on others, they wanted to reform the Anglican Church back to its “pure” form. The Pilgrims who settled the Plymouth Colony were actually separatists, who were different from the Puritans in that they wanted no association with the Church of England at all. The Pilgrims were a severe lot, but they had more of a “we want to live apart from people who disagree with us” ideology versus the Puritan ideology of “you’re going to believe as we believe, or else.”

The Puritans in the MBC made things miserable for Anabaptists, Quakers and others who settled in the region. However, there was still enough immigration of Quakers and other divergent religious groups that eventually the Province of Massachusetts Bay became more tolerant over time. In the times of the Founding Fathers there were still Puritan firebrands but they had much less influence. Prominent Massachusetts political leaders like John Adams for example were largely deist–a position that would have been untenable in the 1600s when even voting in the MBC required the leadership evaluate your “character” to ascertain you both believed and practiced appropriate religious philosophy.

That’s one part of one colony, so the idea that America was founded by the religious extremists of Europe is just not true. The idea that their descendants remained more religious is also not true. The descendants of the MBC founders actually became much less religious, while the center of American religious fundamentalism is in the South, and the Southern Colonies were almost solely founded out of economic opportunism and had a range of religious belief. “Ordinary” Anglicanism was the biggest but there were also large numbers of French Huguenots who settled in the South.

America actually arguably was much less religious than Europe at the point of the revolution. Many of the Founding Fathers were deist, some were essentially closet atheists (it is unlikely Jefferson for example would qualify as anything other than an atheist.) Washington was a buttoned-down Anglican but there is little evidence religion was very important in his day to day life. He made his visits to his church as required of someone in his station but that appears to be it.

Why America is more religious than Europe is a complex question I doubt I can fully answer, but the idea that we were “founded by religious nuts and descended from them and thus we are also religious nuts” is just patently false. One of the New England colonies was founded by overbearing religious nuts, but by the end of the 18th century even there religious extremism was fairly low–to the point that mostly areligious men were of political prominence there.

I think a few things have lead to America being more religious, in no particular order:

  1. Due to not having a State religion, there were fewer and less serious political arguments about religion. This allowed people to remain very religious and even form tight-knit religious communities. There may not have been a national religion but Baptists started living around other Baptists, Catholics tended to like to live around other Catholics. This became less true over time.

  2. We had two movements called “Great Awakenings” in the United States, which had a significant impact on religiosity in our country. I don’t believe Europe had a similar thing, it was unique to America and it’s quite possible we would be a significantly less religious country today if not for them.

  3. The United States has/had a tradition of many small towns that had to be largely self-governing for day-to-day affairs. I think in smaller communities that are less influenced by national politics there is an emphasis on more uniformity. It’s easy to be a Catholic in New York City in the 1800s because even then it was a huge city comparatively with lots of enclaves. But in a small Massachusetts or Southern town it’s much less tenable to be part of a religious minority. I think this results in people taken religion more seriously and people converting to be part of their local society, and then taking the religion quite seriously.

151

The genocide of the native inhabitants not counting?

152

As a “nationalist” genocide? Nope, not at all. It was 90%+ a matter of disease, the rest was plain opportunism/desire for land. That’s very different from the nationalist movements of the latter 19th and first half of the 20th century. Were you confused and of the opinion all genocides were nationalist? Plus, it certainly didn’t start two world wars; nor was it an impetus for ongoing conflict between states.

153

Or the Invasion of Canada?
or Mexico…
or Hawaii…
or the Philipines…
or… what?
Say, you want freedom fries or normal chips on your shoulder?

154

While I think it’s pretty silly to insist the US has been less warlike than the US all of those took place during the colonial age when the European powers were tripping over each other to conquer the world and the US was being no different.

155

And you think that the European conflicts were not about desire for more resources? People were just fighting over the concept of nationalism?

156

Depends. I don’t think the Holocaust (for example) in any ways brought economic benefits.

157

I would say that this is the main driver as far as I can tell. It’s a lot harder to make someone follow a particular line of reasoning if they have been exposed to other lines.

158

Depends on your perspective, Hitler thought a Europe without Jews, Gypsies etc would be a better place that would offer strong economic conditions.

159

Don’t tell my catalanist coworkers, my catalanist relatives, my cousin who almost gave his mother a heart attack when he declared himself a Spaniard, 2/3 of my city hall, the guys who make “climbing Pamplona’s city hall or parliament to put an ikurriña where the chains should be” into a regular occurrence, or the many Swiss, Germans, French, Britons of different stripes or Italians who would take enormous offense at being confused for someone from the next country (or region) over.

I also suggest not trying to perform a tree analysis on that sentence, it came out a bit long.

Qui, “getting rid of these pesky foreigners who are taking our jobs” may be a familiar line? It’s the tldr of how the guys with the svastikas sold what eventually became known as the Holocaust. Very much economically motivated on the part of the buyers, if not for the sellers.

160

People think Europeans are less nationalistic than Americans?:dubious:

Leaving aside Nava’s excellent points, look at the Balkans and most of the former Soviet Empire.