The nations of modern Europe are often referred to as “post-Christian societies.” Particular Christian denominations still have official status in some countries, but the average level of personal Christian religious belief/practice appears to be in steep, long-term decline. This is not the case in the U.S. (except, perhaps, in the view of Pat Robertson and his ilk). See this chart for a comparison of levels of traditional religious belief in the U.S. and other countries: http://www.religioustolerance.org/rel_comp.htm
Issues for debate:
Why is this? The U.S. is culturally similar to Europe (at least, to the UK), and has been through roughly the same post-Enlightenment cultural experiences as Europe (with the exception of WWI and WWII and the Cold War – all of which we fought, but the fighting didn’t really happen here.) Why does the level of religious belief here remain so much higher?
Will it ever change? Is the U.S. permanently, essentially a more religious culture? Or are we simply, for some reason, behind the curve in a general historical process of secularization and increasing skepticism? If the latter, why are we behind the curve?
If the U.S. ever does become a post-Christian society, will that be a good or a bad thing for the U.S.? For the world?
To answer 1, one reason might be that the US never had an official religion, unlike most of Europe. Fir the most part, specific denominational religious belief was never mandatory, nor were minority denominations persecuted. So, this, firstly, led to a flowering of denominations, covering a wide variety of beliefs. This also meant that a person could define himself by his religious beliefs. Saying “I am a Baptist” in the United States means more than saying “I am an Anglican” in England. The Baptist is making a specific claim to identity.
Also, with no established church, a person could be religious while at the same time opposed to the government. In places where there is an established religion, atheism becomes a political act. Political parties form which include disestablishmentarianism as part of their platform, and in response, the Church backs a specific political ideology. Look at the situation in Spain during the republic, for example, or Mexico during the Liberal revolution.
Certainly some problems will go away, like this ever-churning evolution vs creationism in schools stuff. And I’d bet religion is pretty much all the wind behind the sails of the efforts to prevent stem cell research, so there’s another problem that would likely go away. But who knows what problems will arise to take their place. I’m still for seeing what happens in post-Christian USA, though.
I also wonder just how “post-Christian” Europe really is. Here in the Netherlands there still seem to be an awful lot of people who go to church and read the Bible and all, even if they wouldn’t state categorically that they never have any doubts about the existence of God (which is the sort of categorical statement that your linked survey was using).
Heck, the major mall in my highly up-to-date and sophisticated Dutch city maintains a large Christian bookstore. Must be a market out there somewhere.
(I also predict that Western European societies are going to become more self-consciously Christian as their populations become increasingly anxious about Muslim immigrants. As Captain Amazing notes, religious identity is an important way of defining yourself in opposition to the “other”. Consider the fiercely anti-Catholic Protestantism in 19th- and 20th-century America that fed on the large numbers of Catholic Irish and Italian immigrants.)
(I also predict that Western European societies are going to become more self-consciously Christian as their populations become increasingly anxious about Muslim immigrants. As Captain Amazing notes, religious identity is an important way of defining yourself in opposition to the “other”.QUOTE]
Not necessarily so. In France what is opposed to islamism is “laïcité” (secularism), not catholicism. So the “religious identity” people gather around would be : lack thereof, more or less.
And by the way the model proposed by ** Captain amazing ** doesn’t fit well with the french example, either. People wandered away from religion due to the opposition between the republican/liberal and the catholic/conservative values. The secularism is the consequence of a long struggle during the 19th century and half of the 20th century between the church and the state, not of the endorsmnt of the former by the latter.
Of course, you could still argue that it’s related to the existence of a monolithic religion as opposed to a large number of sects.
On second thought, ** Captain Amazing ** might be correct if we extend his hypothesis to the will of a monolithic religion and its adherents to be endorsed by the state. Successful in the case of Franco’s Spain, for instance, failed in the case of republican France, but in both case driving away from a religion associated with reactionnary values a large part of the population.
But in this case, shouldn’t we expect a similar backlash in the USA resulting from the strong commitment of part of the american christians to impose their views upon the rest of the society?
We can but hope. Seriously, I think you’re quite right that the more religion is government-imposed, the more anti-religiosity will grow. I think it would be a good thing if we developed a backlash against the more theocratic branches of Christian fundamentalism that are now gaining power in the US, but I don’t expect it to happen for quite a while.
Well, there’s already a lot of resentment. A lot. But no signs of a backlash, on any greater scale than we saw in the 2004 election. The problem, I think, is that most Americans do self-identify as Christians, even if they don’t structure their whole political and social world-view around that; so there’s an emotional limit to how much they can protest when the kind of Christians who do make a mighty noise in the public square. On the one hand there’s the liberal secular humanists (what would, I suppose, be regarded in Europe as “normal people”) spouting their message of tolerance and skepticism, and on the other hand there’s the fundies and evangelicals spouting their message of God and morality, and the average American Christian might be reluctant to take sides openly with the former against the latter – especially if the latter’s message gives him/her some spiritual doubts about whether he/she is really all right with God.
The problem in Europe does not seem to be about religious belief, but that so many people have ceased believing in anything: religion, politics, ideology. It’s easier, after the horrors of the 20th century, to just numb yourself with mindless pleasures and comforts.
BTW – just in case there’s any confusion – I’m using the word “fundies” as shorthand for religious-political conservatives in general – including Catholics. In today’s America, the most important religious divide is not between Protestants and Catholics, it is between those who are deeply and traditionally religious and those who are not. (Jack Chick’s MMV.) The former are a minority nowadays – but a very, very large and well-organized minority.
I’m impressed, Captain Amazing - I’ve never seen the word “disestablishmentarianism” in any argument. Nice to see that it isn’t simply one of those vocabulary-builder words.
I think things would improve a lot if we could just get the Baptists to hold their brethren under the water for a few minutes longer during the baptism ceremony.
My first thought when I read that was: “Now I know how Americans feel when people from other parts of the world base their view of US on Hollywood” I certainly don’t recognise myself or anyone I know in smiling bandit’s description.
However, thinking about it, it could be that you’re right – perhaps Europeans really are less interested in/believing in politics and ideology than people elsewhere, and more prone to “mindless pleasures and comforts”. I certainly don’t know enough about the extent of hedonism in various parts of the world to make an informed comparison. What do you base your statement on? Do you have any suggestions for metrics/statistics we could look at to get an idea of how correct your statement is? I suggest participation in elections as a reasonable metric to measure interest in politics, but I’m coming up short in the other areas you mention. (I did actually find a statistical study on values among Norwegians (in Norwegian here), ranging topics as diverse as religion, gender equality, materialism, patriotism, and so on, but it’s based on people’s own description of themselves, so I see a huge source of error right there.)
Heh heh. My own WA (and slightly malicious) Guess is that this may be the new right-wing talking point about those nasty “socialist” Europeans.
A lot of Americans are starting to notice some of the advantages of many European mixed-economy societies: lower poverty and disease, universal health insurance, more vacation time, more job security, public transit, environmental policies, low crime rates, good education, etc. And several European societies have pretty high incomes and pretty low unemployment, too, even by our standards (although of course they’re all far from perfect and have lots of things that need fixing, like anywhere else). And their currency’s doing quite well. Lots of them can afford to take “cheap” vacations in America, even.
So our hardcore capitalist zealots can no longer get away with painting Europeans as a bunch of earnest socialist cranks who console themselves with philosophical discussions as they shiver in the unemployment queue. Uh-oh.
What to do for a new anti-social-welfare sales pitch? Well, maybe what they’ve come up with is this line that the Yurpins are simply mindless comfort-loving hedonists! If you lazy cosmopolitan drones had any belief in anything or any moral seriousness of purpose, you’d be out there working 65 hours a week for subunion wages and no health coverage, like us.
Well, whaddya know: looks like I may have nailed it. Out of curiosity, I just googled “Europe hedonistic comfort”, and look what I struck in the first few hits: Peaktalk Politics and Markets, August 2004:
Well, there you are! Those lazy godless Europeans have become so addicted to “comfort and freedom” and “material pleasure” that they even refuse to invade Muslim countries for no good reason or have more children than they want! Shocking, ain’t it?
If you selfish antireligious continental snobs would just stop obsessing about “personal well-being” and “a nice and comfortable life” and similar socialist crap, you could get your “Calvinist work ethic” back and be “full of undiluted ambition”, like us! What you really need are some character-building sleepless nights worrying about your job insecurity and healthcare costs and credit card payments. I bet that would get your smug complacent asses back in the pews! Oh sure, it might seem like a decline in your quality of life, but just think how good it would be for those clueless atheist hedonist souls of yours!
Yup, looks to me like what we’ve got here is indeed an Official Right-Wing Spin Machine Talking Point ™.
Seriously, I think you’re quite right that the more religion is government-imposed, the more anti-religiosity will grow. I think it would be a good thing if we developed a backlash against the more theocratic branches of Christian fundamentalism that are now gaining power in the US, but I don’t expect it to happen for quite a while.
I certainly don’t recognise myself or anyone I know in smiling bandit’s description.