Really? I participate in a board that is about 50% European, and their level of knowledge of the arcana of one ideology or another is sobering in its totality. This is typical:
This is from a 20 year-old (Australian, but educated in the UK.) Now I wasn’t the biggest social butterfly in high school/college, but I’ve met very few 20 year-olds here in the States who would even ask such a question. much less be “troubled” by it.
To be honest, this also is a purely anecdotal observation. Maybe there are boards full of Europeans that don’t talk like this - if so, I don’t visit them
I think at least part of the answer is that it wasn’t that many generations ago that many Americans lived directly off the land. When your survival depends on that crop coming in, you might be more inclined to be petitioning the Almighty for assistance. Those that prospered may have given some of the credit to God and thus felt the need to maintain a close relationship with Him.
Another factor is that many Americans came here precisely because they wanted to practice their religion in peace. For those that believed religion was important enough to cross an ocean for, it’s quite plausible that they have passed down that importance through the generations.
Still another factor is the faith of black Americans. People who are oppressed often turn to religion, see 1980s Poland, European Jews 1930s, etc. When earthly life offers no hope, then the afterlife becomes more attractive. After generations of slavery and then segregation and Jim Crow, the deep faith of many American blacks is easy to understand.
I think the most remarkable case is that of Ireland. In 30 years, they have gone from being 99+% deeply religious, strict Catholics, to being some of the least religious people in Europe. Somebody mentuioned Quebec-I can personally attest to THEIR transformation (I was educated by an order of French Canadian Brothers). The French-Canadaians have totally turned away from the strict Catholicism of their ancestors. The question is why?
With regards to Quebec, the practice of Catholicism by the population at large wasn’t all that strict, but the church definitely had a lock on most power structures.
Case in point-- if you look at census records from 1880 and 1890, you will find that in Quebec, the people who went door-to-door were Catholic brothers, nuns, etc…, and they frequently altered the data that was collected. There are multiple cases of women living at home alone who wrote down ‘divorced’ as marital status, since they hadn’t seen their husbands in years, and for all they knew he was living in Maine. In the records the word ‘divorced’ is crossed out and replaced with the word ‘married’ or ‘widowed’.
I think much the same power structure exists in the U.S. Working here in a newsroom, it’s a frequent response whenever something happens in a neighbourhood to go get a clip from the local religious leader. Why? Becuse they’re around and will likely have something to say, and are all too willing to thrust themselves into the spotlight. But if you ask me, that religious leader isn’t having too much of an effect on his flock if they’re out dealing drugs and fighting other gangs…
Same thing with the whole rise of the religious right as a power group in U.S. politics. James Dobson, his Focus on the Family, and other groups are guaranteed to have a viewpoint on anything remotely controversial. Since the modern view of news is to present ‘both sides of the story’, getting a clip from a religious type is half your work done right there.
But does the population at large actually agree with what their religious leaders say? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Most of the nation strongly opposed what extremists wanted with regards to Terri Schiavo, and about 40 % of the country opposes gay marriage-- but support for gay civil union is about 46%.
As has been mentioned before (and this would also apply to places like Spain pre- vs. post- Franco), if for a long time living by the dictates of the church is just “what you do” because it’s the social-cultural expectation (or in Ireland and Spain, legally enforceable), then piety develops shallow roots. A lot of the Irish, Quebecois and Spanish were just going thru the motions because it was “what respectable people do”, subject to social inconvenience – and saw no way out of it, as these societies were effectively insularized except for small elites. As that insularity broke, the population found things they cared more about than a religion that for many of them was just a rote ritual.
I think so and I think this is why religion has become important in politics. It seems to me that the super-religious notice the decline in church attendance, equate that with weakening religion and become politically super-active because they fear the loss of religion.
As noted, almost the entire Western Hemisphere, Africa, the ME, SW Asia have similar injections of God into political discourse as the U.S. - some a little more, some a bit less. Europe and if we exclude (former and currently communist "Asia”, SE Asia and Japan because they clearly are on a different religious-political track) then Europe sort of stands alone in this reagrd … and I think that is because of what has touched on: state Churches, Religious and political institutional interests were so intertwined : co-opting, corrupting and cooperating with each other in ways that really had no parallel elsewhere in the World.
In this regard Europe is unique, and I won’t say differently. However, I think there is another politcal thread at play here…
One way to conceptualize this is to think of it as this:“Traditional Values” campaigns mainly aimed at keeping perceived threatening societal change at bay take a religious message in the U.S. In Europe (becuas eof what was noted above and by other posters) this message takes the guise of anti-immigration and immigration secularization and absorption programs that would never be acceptable in the U.S. These forces are as strong (or stronger in the U.S.) but instead of being turned against immigrants are turned inward against contraception, abortion, prayer in school, and other assorted “traditonal values” threateners. Aimed mainly at White middle class traditional family voters, Both poltical processes, in Europe and in the U.S., are the same processes: Folks want things to be like they were in an unspecified “better time” -they don’t want things to change and think they can use law to turn back the clock. It is a strong human urge that is being co-opted and exploited by politicians on both continents.
I am saying that the “religious political right” in America is the same basic political movement as the anti-immigration political force is in Europe. They aim at the same people and both ultimately want (essentially) the same thing. That is not the whole of an answer to the OP – but it is part of it.
Of course, Pennsylvania and New England were also colonized by religious fanatics (Quakers and Puritans, respectively). Why has the religious heritage of those regions been transmogrified into the secularist social liberalism of Greater New England (NE plus the Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest) while that of the South has remained mired in anti-intellectual social-religious conservatism? Lot of reasons, but the cosmopolitan effects of early industrialization in the Northeast probably has a lot to do with it.
Depends on what you mean by “decline.” From The Next American Nation, by Michael Lind (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1996), pp. 278-279:
Perhaps was distinguishes the contemporary religious right from “mainstream” American Christianity is that the it cannot be accused of “the heresy of indifferentism.”
The point made above about southern and other predominantly non-urban cultures growing around churches is an extremely important one. The role of the church in black culture for centuries also cannot be underestimated (the one place where they could be relatively free to gather and commune without white people present) and thus civic organization and identity became fused with religion. In the south as well the heavy loss of life and crippling socioeconomic changes during and following the Civil War caused much introspection that even strenghtened the church:state bond, as well as an intense distrust and despising of anything northern or otherwise an affront to “tradition” (evolution, civil rights for blacks and gays, etc) was an invasive body that had to be repelled because they’d lost too much of their identity already.
I’ll be flamed for saying this, but I honestly think one reason that politics has become so intensely religion oriented in the south is that it’s a substitute for open racism. While a politician can no longer shout “N*GGER!” and hope to get elected, he can say “Remember when we had prayer in schools? Things were so much better then…”
Prayer left schools in the south not terribly long after (in some places before) they were racially integrated. “When we had prayer in schools” translates as “back when schools were all-white” or “back before black empowerment”. To the older generations it’s also “remember when your body was young and you still had hopes and dreams you thought you would fulfill and above all you knew how everything worked and what the natural order should be back before the paradigm shifted every Tuesday”. And “remember a time when there was moral certainty, back before you were forced to confront the fact that your world was based on a blood soaked history of inequities and that the people you revered in your youth were actually racially opressive bigots”?
Trent Lott’s fall was related to this: he made traditionalist Southerners lose the euphemism that sustains them for a moment and that was fatal. It’s one thing to talk about how wonderful the nation was when you had the post WW2 patriotism and the “prayers in school”, but when he parised not just a vague lost Eden but specifically the bid for the presidency of an ardent racial separatist, he laid naked the ugliness of that aspect of southern culture and unintentionally removed the Magnolia Myth Interface of happy black people living below poverty level because they didn’t want any better and a rigidly uniform rural caste system that was that way because “dad gum we liked it that way” rather than mass media condemning it was still suppressable and economic vassalage to husbands and companies would allow nothing else, etc… It’s the job of any nostalgist to eliminate the negative aspects and he hiccoughed on the job.
Thanks for the stats Brainglutton. They fit in with my preception that religious behavior in the US isn’t on the rise, it’s simply declining more slowly then in other places. I also think that part of the reason for the preceived recent growth of religion in the states is due to the fact that while it may be in decline all over, it is falling faster in someplaces then others. Thus while folks in general in Crawford and Boston may both be less observant then they were 15 yrs ago, since Boston has become more secular faster, the preceived difference between the two is greater, allowing Bostonians to say that folks in Crawford are a lot more religious then they used to be.
Won’t flame you, but I strongly disagree. I know a lot of folks who want prayer in school, and they want it because they honestly belive encouraging christian values etc. amonst the young is beneficial. I highly doubt that anything close to a majority use it as some sort of code word for segregation.
I don’t think Sampiro meant that it was any sort of crypto-racism but that it’s an equivalent, cynical hot button for modern politicians. It’s a direct appeal to the same base tribalism and bigotry. Politicians tell them that the liberals are somehow attacking their religion by not letting them force other people’s kids to practice it and it works like a charm.
You omitted the critical part, “… respecting the establishment of religion.” The religious groups in question contend that the First Amendment is frequently bandied about even in situations where a religion is NOT being established. You may personally disagree with that assessment, but that’s immaterial to the topic at hand.
Canada as well. Bringing up your religion at all as any kind of qualification for office or justification for your policies, as I see it done in the US, is an excellent way to get yourself laughed off the stage.
It isn’t as though Americans just sprang from the ground and have existed in a vacuum untouched by the events in Europe. Those who settled this country bore the legacy of religious difficulties just as much as those who remained in Europe. In fact our 1st Amendment is a pretty good indication that politically minded Americans were just as aware of the dangers of religious strife as our European cousins. In fact throughout U.S. history we’ve had our own little religious conflicts. Catholics and Jews were the target of discrimination and sometimes violence by various groups. The Mormons were persecuted in many areas and once they settled in Utah there was a real chance they might go to war against the United States for independence. They even massacred a group of settlers on their way to California. So I don’t really buy our lack of experience with religious conflicts as being the reason why we’re more religious.
Maybe it is because we’ve never had a monolithic religion dominate our cultural landscape. We’ve always had an opportunity to find another church if the one we belonged to didn’t suit our needs. Quakers, Shakers, Methodist, Lutherans, Catholics, Mormons, those folks who dance with snakes in W. Virginia, and god knows what else. We even let those crazy bastards in Innsmouth worship those freaky fish gods until the Feds descended upon them in 1929.
