On Wed, 8 Jun 2005, Doug Henwood wrote:
> So why is the US an outlier on religion, compared to other rich countries?
The first obvious answer that comes to mind is that America has a unique religious history. It's the only country in the world where dissent Protestantism was the formative religion. And that changes everything.
To start with, it changes the very concept of religion. Americans regard religion as something you choose, rather than something you are born into. If you feel your church is wrong, you can choose a new one. You can even start your own in a basement. Spiritual quests where people go from religion to religion used to be perfectly normal life passages in America, and still are in some places.
Whereas with religions you're born into -- i.e., all the traditions of Europe, and almost all traditions in the world -- this idea of choosing or making a religion is almost incomprehensible. In those traditions, if you grow dissatisfied with the religion you're born into, you basically give up. It's a much frailer system. And this frailty was intensified in Europe because every country had a state religion whose articles you were forced to subscribe to in order to get ahead. It was kind of like joining the communist party, and over time, it had a similar effect in undermining people's belief. Choice helps a lot.
Having state religions also meant that every one of those countries went through a formative political crisis where religion and the state came into conflict. (By formative crisis I simply mean a national political crisis that happened when the structure of the national constitution, in the old, unwritten sense of constitution, was still being formed.) All Catholic states had battles with Rome and some hugely important fight against outside influence. And all had domestic political battles that pitched the conservative establishment on the side of the established church and the forces of reform against it. And out of these formative crises, each country developed a vehement strain of anti-clericalism that combined patriotism and liberalism. The US never developed a real anti-clericalist tradition precisely because it never had a state church, or a king, or an episcopate, so it never had these formative crises.
Unlike almost anywhere else in the world, religion in America has been since our founding voluntary and informal. And because of those two things, it has also been multiple, competitive, adaptive and enthusiastic. Britain still had enthusiastic sects during the 19th century. But dissent as a whole in England, including Catholics and the sedater sects, was only 15% of the population. In other European countries it was much less than that. And in all them, it involved civil disabilities that were a serious disincentive -- none of whihc we had here.
This competitive marketplace of enthusiasm meant American religion was constantly innovating when European established churches could barely change at all. The result was that during the important 19C, when the mass transition to secularism began to take place in Europe, it didn't happen here to the same degree, not because Americans were stupider, but because religion was a lot more fun. It put up much better competition. The 19C was a world in which public meetings were the main form of excitement and entertainment. And in that field, American religion delivered in a big way when European religion wasn't even fielding a team. It's the old story of American popular culture: we had a much more lively product and we sold it better. But the crucial ingredient on top of that was that the 19C and early 20C promoters of religion had the enormous advantage of a receptive market: a population acclimated to think that choosing religion was normal, and that revivalism was normal, and who could accept all this innovation as really a return to that old-time religion, which is still true today in our mall-like megachurches. In a country with a state religion, where religion is not only staid but literally defines decorum, this couldn't look like religion at all.
That decorum part is important in other ways as well. Because it was always part of the informal sphere, religion in America has from the very beginning been associated in the minds of believers with revolt against the established order. Which gave it a frisson it never had in Europe. And which it still has for its followers today.
Michael