<< US religiosity is a result of the
faults of the US society - alienation, meaningless consumerism, loneliness.
I do not think that a bunch of wacky beliefs in a big spook in the sky
has any real effect whatever - it does not cause anything, good or bad.
Nor does it remedy alienation - it is the social solidarity or rather
"togetherness" created by religious groups that attract so many people.
Individualistically minded elite liberals have a real trouble understanding
that.
Regards,
Wojtek Sokolowski
>> I still disagree. American culture is distinguished by (a) constitutional faith in a series of Moses-like laws handed down by a group of tribal patriarchs known as the Founding Fathers and (b) pious faith in something called the "Judeo-Christian heritage," a phrase that would have boggled the minds of both Jews and Christians a scant 100 years ago. These two pieties are mutually reinforcing. Because Americans trust to God or the Founders, they don't look to themselves, i.e. to popular sovereignty, to new-model the American polity and bring it up to level of the 20th century, much less the 21st. This is why America is so awful -- why it's prey to a hyper-commercial capitalist culture, why its cities are in ruins, why the corporations have such untrammeled authority, and so on. U.S. democracy, such as it is, is still stuck in the 18th century.
Dan Lazare