Actually this is not a bad description of the Middle America where I grew up. Most everybody went to church, though often not every Sunday. But cases of deep commitment, much less fanaticism, were very much more the exception than the rule. The week-in, week-out church experience was for most people, as far as I could tell, more a matter of maintaining and enjoying a certain kind of social interaction than anything else. Of course it was a solace in times of bereavement and trouble, too, and I imagine that most people were believers in some not-too-stringent sense. But most pew-sitters were definitely not militants, and it was considered very poor manners to talk about religion outside of church.
This picture of America as a land where religious fanaticism (as opposed to religion) is pandemic is just mistaken, I think. The fanatics get all the ink, and coastal secularists, who have in many cases never had any family connection with church at all, figure that the media picture is what it must be like.
The recent phenomenon of mega-churches -- which postdates my growing-up days in Kentucky -- is best treated as a branch of the entertainment industry, I would say.
--
Michael J. Smith
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org