Religiosity in the U.S.

[Jim heartfield]

In message <bf91ad47.3584f991 at aol.com>, Dhlazare at aol.com writes
>Yes, but the religious invocations like these were universal in the European
>world in the 1620s.  The question is why is this model so uniquely powerful in
>the US nearly four centuries later?  Britain has not one but two established
>churches, the C of E and the C of Scotland.  Yet if a Brit PM ever referred to
>the UK as a "city on a hill," the laughter would be general.  When someone
>like Reagan uses the phrase, even liberals fold the hands and nodd reverently.
>Indeed, the libs nod even more vigorous to show their faith is even greater
>than the conservatives'.

Once again, I have to regretfully inform the list that Britain is no
haven of enlightened values. The religiosity of the political class is
on the increase. Tony Blair in particular is in evangelical style. I
don't know whether he has referred to Britain as a Shining City on a
Hill yet but he surely will, having no qualms over waxing lyrical about
'Young Britain', 'Cool Britannia' and so on.

To the horror of our closet atheism (known as the Church of England)
Blair has been granted dispensation to attend the Catholic mass of his
wife's faith, and, one presumes, undertaken to raise his children in its
doctrines. Indeed Catholicism is in vogue amongst Britain's ruling
elite, with such recent converts as the former-prisons minister. A
documentary last year about the foreign office revealed that the James
Bonds of yesteryear have been replaced, by some redoubtable women of an
ardent catholic faith. The pictures of the senior FO officials in the
former Yugoslavia, dewey-eyed at a mass at an ancient Croatian Church,
talking about the sense of religious duty in their political mission
ought to have sounded alarms in the Muslim and Serb camps.
-- 
Jim heartfield