Secularism and Establishment

I really liked Roger Cohen's line about Mitt Romney's "Wikipedia-level appreciation of other religions, admiring 'the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims' and 'the ancient traditions of the Jews'" but I think he makes the wrong point about Romney's condemnation of Europe's empty cathedrals. To me, the point to be made is that this worry about the US becoming like Europe is in stark tension with the oft-expressed conservative worry that religion is being pushed "out of the public square." For whatever you may say about Europe's relative lack of religiosity, it's not a lack of entanglement of religion in public life that led to it.

In the United Kingdom from which Cohen is writing there is, after all, an established church. And so it goes across northern Europe where each country traditionally had its own established Protestant church. And then across southern Europe, the Catholic Church always had official or quasi-official status. There was no question of pushing the church out of the public square. It's just that many people (the image of Europe as an all-atheist land tends to be overblown, there are churchgoers there, just not as many as in the US) wound up turning their backs on the church. This development most likely seems specifically related to the undue public-ification of religion in Europe. American religious groups, by contrast, have traditionally had to compete in a market of sorts for congregants. A church nobody wants to attend winds up shutting down, a popular church grows. Consequently, people have found ways to keep bringing people into the pews. Trying to make the United States a more officially "religious" country seems likely to accomplish the reverse. At the end of the day, the mast majority of people hate politicians and politics and respect religious leaders and religion -- getting the latter involved in the former is unlikely, at the end of the day, to enhance the esteem in which it's held.

Comments

Many of the mainstream churches in America - the denominational counterparts of Europe's empty cathedrals - are, if not quite empty, not doing what you'd call healthy business. For the most part it's the Bible-thumping types of churches that are packing people in.

Posted by Peter | December 13, 2007 9:47 AM

It is conventional wisdom that religious competition in America is a primary source of America's greater religiosity than Europe. I'm not sure if this is true, though.

This article I read recently attributes Europe's decline in religiosity largely to people's greater sense of social security (the feeling, not the program). The take-home message is that some may consider universal health care, progressive taxation, and a generous safety net to be "bad" because then people wouldn't need religion as much.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/paul07/paul07_index.html

Posted by Jim W | December 13, 2007 9:49 AM

This is part of the purpose of the First Ammendment -- to save Congregationalism from stale Anglicanism.

That's snarky, but it's also somewhat true. Nevertheless, Peter is right that theologically liberal, mainline Protestant churches are doing rather poorly compared with the neo-Great Awakening sorts.

Posted by Ben Cronin | December 13, 2007 9:49 AM

I think Jim has a good point. Add to it the fact that Europe does a better job of educating its citizens and that too becomes a strike against religious participation.

I have always been amazed at the knowledge and intelligence of the many Europeans I have met in my travels. People who have no university training but seem to have a greater knowledge base about the world and about science than many college graduates I meet here in the US.

Posted by Ricky | December 13, 2007 9:54 AM

I live in Europe now, so I can add some fodder to this. When you listen to young people talk, they point out that religion has, you know, led to, gee golly, a LOT OF FREAKING WAR. Think of a continent tired of major war. Then think of the US, which has had one little small day with 3.000 dead (yes, it was awful, but it isn't every freaking day, like WW1 and WW2 were) and is still thrashing about like a baby in a temper tantrum.

Perhaps Europeans are tired of dealing with that bullshit. Just sayin.

Posted by mok | December 13, 2007 9:56 AM

Matt,

Ask Julian Sanchez about "outsight." That's pretty much what this post is.

Posted by Bill C. | December 13, 2007 9:59 AM

There's an established church in England, not the UK.

Posted by P O'Neill | December 13, 2007 10:06 AM

mok,

What you say goes back to having an educated citizenry. We have presidential candidates who say the earth was created 6000 years ago. They say that our country's Constitution is based on biblical laws. And yet in the upcoming election there will be at least 45% of our population that will vote for these ignorant candidates because they are even more ignorant. That's not to say there aren't similar types in Europe, but its hard to find mainstream politicians in Europe who could get away with such anti-intellectualisms.

Posted by Ricky | December 13, 2007 10:19 AM

Ricky,

Yes, it's about ignorance, but it's also about history. In the 70s, there was local, home-grown terrorism (from the left, mostly) akin to the local, home-grown variety in the US (from the right, mostly, see Oklahoma bombing, etc.). These issues are close up and personal. Americans are, sadly, wimps when it comes to understanding the scale of war. Europeans had the collapse of Yugoslavia, right in their backyard. It's REAL here, not video game fantasy like in the US.

I was broadcasting radio in the US on Sept. 11, and people kept saying "This is war! This is war! We're at war!" No. War is when it happens tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after. When bombs go off all over, and militias and snipers are everywhere. When kids get blown up, when tanks roll past, when burning buildings stand in random locations.

It's history, which didn't go anywhere. It's right here, in front of the Europeans. The US, with its short term memory, is rightly mocked for not getting it. And somehow, I think that's related to that whole religious quackery. Delusions are comforting. Reality is hard.

Posted by mok | December 13, 2007 10:25 AM

It is conventional wisdom that religious competition in America is a primary source of America's greater religiosity than Europe. I'm not sure if this is true, though. - Jim W.

What I find most odd about this "conventional wisdom" is that a lot of the people most enarmored withy competition and the "free market" (i.e. GOoPers) are the very people who would want government "backing" of religion and increased public religiosity.

The take-home message is that some may consider universal health care, progressive taxation, and a generous safety net to be "bad" because then people wouldn't need religion as much.

I seem to remember that some on the right pretty much say this, rather explicitly in fact. Some have argued, in fact, that the safety-net undermines society because it undermines the role of religion, which helps glue society together.

A somewhat more secular version of this argument also exists that claims a conflict between the safety-net and a functioning democratic republic: the safety-net has displaced fraternal organizations, so since people are now no longer dependent on fraternal organizations, they don't join them. However, not being involved in such fraternal organizations, people now no longer have a first hand appreciations for how democratic governance works (c.f. Bowling Alone). So people buy stupid arguments that they wouldn't otherwise buy (e.g. that Kerry flip-flopped ... if people understood the democratic process, they'd understand what he was saying) ... so we end up with Presidents like GWB.

Posted by DAS | December 13, 2007 10:29 AM

To me, the point to be made is that this worry about the US becoming like Europe is in stark tension with the oft-expressed conservative worry that religion is being pushed "out of the public square."

This seems like an odd way to phrase it, since not only is it the point to be made, but it was the point Romney actually made. "The establishment of state religions in Europe did no favor to Europe's churches."

Admittedly, that was obscured by Romney's next point "Infinitely worse is the other extreme, the creed of conversion by conquest". The opposite of state established religions is conversion by conquest?

Posted by Consumatopia | December 13, 2007 10:35 AM

When you listen to young people talk, they point out that religion has, you know, led to, gee golly, a LOT OF FREAKING WAR.

Actually, if you look at the bloodiest century of them all -- that would be the 20th -- you'll find that religion plays a very minor role in all the carnage.

On the other hand, political ideology (eg, democracy, communism, fascism, etc.) has been a real hit when it comes to killing people by the numbers. Should we be less political? I've ignored nationalistic self-interest because it's a constant, not a variable.

I'm with Ben, though...the church/state thing was also to protect the church.

Posted by nolaboyd | December 13, 2007 10:50 AM

Daniel Larison had an excellent discussion of the argument that that "market forces" explain why America is so much more religious than Europe. First, while there are European countries with state-established churches, it's not as if these churches are particularly powerful or exercise much control over the citizenry. There are plenty of alternatives to the Anglican Church in England. Second, if a "free market" really leads to a flourishing of religion, then why are countries that have abolished state-established churches (Ireland, Spain, Italy) as secular as the rest of Europe?

I think Mok's point that the decline of religion in Europe has something to do with experiencing two world wars is right on. It's hard to believe that there would be the same level of religiousity in the United States if we had experienced the full horror of those two conflicts that Europe did.

Posted by Peter H | December 13, 2007 10:54 AM

Pretty sure that war has little to do with the decline of religion in Europe as:-
a)The decline is just as pronounced in countries which were neutral such as Eire, Sweden & Switzerland.
b)The only people (ex a few weirdos & people pretending in order to get their kids into church run schools, I know far more of the latter than the former) who go to church in Europe are the elderly who actually experienced the war first hand.
I think the explanation lies in the rise in education levels in the post war period, partially due to the welfare state allowing higher school leaving ages. Educated people tend to be more sceptical everywhere, even the US.
Interestingly religion prospered under authoritarians but has rapidly declined since.

Posted by Tim | December 13, 2007 11:08 AM

Actually, if you look at the bloodiest century of them all -- that would be the 20th -- you'll find that religion plays a very minor role in all the carnage.

On the other hand, political ideology (eg, democracy, communism, fascism, etc.) - nolaboyd

Ummm ... where did people get the idea that one should kill, e.g., Jews? Where did people get the idea that a messianic dictator could solve Russia's problems?

I'd hardly call the bloody politics of the 20th century secular.

And as to Tim's point ... the "exhaustion theory" as I understand it isn't that folks who've been through religiously inspired wars decide to give up on religion, it's that their kids, learning the history of religion in Europe, with some objective distance, give up on religion.

Posted by DAS | December 13, 2007 11:18 AM

How far from the public square can religion be when there parties called "Christian Democrats" in many European countries? One of them is ruling Germany now.

Posted by Edward Furey | December 13, 2007 11:43 AM

Edward Furey: The Christian Democrats talk less about religion or God than do American Democrats. It's true.

Posted by d | December 13, 2007 11:48 AM

This argument is nicely laid out in Paul Starr's Freedom's Power, somewhere in chapter 4. Good book.

Posted by Dave Meyer | December 13, 2007 11:49 AM

I'll take the contrarian side on the education issue: while there certainly is an elite group of Europeans who are highly educated, Americans go to college at much higher levels than Europeans, although, unfortunately, the U.S. has started to lag behind on the percentage of people finishing college. We simply stretch out the educational trajectory - while European secondary school students stomp the U.S. in test scores on math, science and the humanities, most of those students track into various vocations, while U.S. students do tend to catch up via college. European countries have notoriously allowed their educational budgets to lag - and they are going to suffer if they continue to do that.

Posted by roger | December 13, 2007 11:56 AM

nolaboyd,
While I agree with your point that the violence of the last century did not have much of a religious basis, I think you are understating the role of nationalistic self-interest. It may have been 'constant' in some sense, but I would argue that religion could be considered 'constant' in a similar way.

Posted by ClarenceWilmot | December 13, 2007 11:59 AM

Strange isn't it, but no one has done more to secularize religion in this country than the religious right movement bent on eradicating seclarism in America, root and branch.

Posted by Ted Frier | December 13, 2007 12:17 PM

Really not sure about the competition theory. Take England. In 1800, the Established Church actually had a lot of clout. You couldn't attend Oxford or Cambridge without signing the 39 Articles, the confession of faith of the Church of England. Catholics in particular were barred from joining the civil service or the army officer corps, or taking seats in Parliament. And so on.
By 1900, all of this had gone. By 2000, even unofficial religious discrimination was almost a thing of the past.
If anything, 1800-2000 saw a move towards a free market in religion in England - and a huge decline in church attendance. The competition theory would predict the opposite.

Posted by ajay | December 13, 2007 12:41 PM

Exactly what religion did Hilter and Stalin espouse ?

This dog won't hunt.

Posted by Neo | December 13, 2007 12:45 PM

The ideas isn't to simply promote religion. The idea is to force others to follow your religion, and only the power of the state -- with its martial forces -- can do that.

Posted by Naveen | December 13, 2007 12:56 PM

Re "Actually, if you look at the bloodiest century of them all -- that would be the 20th -- you'll find that religion plays a very minor role in all the carnage."
----------
The Nazis were able to get control of the Reichstag -- and pass the Enabling Act making Hitler permanent dictator -- because of an alliance with the Catholic Church's Centre party.

A Catholic Church which shared Adolph Hitler's dislike for the "moral decadence" (what the dirty hippies refer to as freedom ) of the Jews, the Social Democrats and the Weimar Republic.
Plus the Centre didn't like the Social Democrats' support for secular schools and separation of Church from State.

By the way, any guess as to what religion Adolph Hitler was reared in?

Posted by Don Williams | December 13, 2007 1:18 PM

roger: the trajectory thing, though I think it takes postgraduate study to level off the disparity, and that also levels out the numbers participating. I'd be fascinated by any testing comparisons between first-year undergraduates (or simply those educated to 18) in Europe and college graduates in the US.

The role of religion between 1800 and 2000 in Europe is complex. 19th-c nationalism was mostly anti-clerical; 20th-c fascist nationalism yoked state churches to its ideology.

[one last tangent: it's still harder to shop on Sunday in most of Germany.]

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 13, 2007 1:59 PM

Oh, and that Mark Steyn quote cited by Daniel Larison is just profoundly ignorant -- as you'd expect from Conrad Black's bag-carrier, a man with a puddle-deep knowledge of British history and culture.

You only need to look at the Wesley chapels and Quaker meeting houses in English and Welsh industrial towns and mining villages to see how absurd it is to claim that the alternative to establishment is ipso facto irreligion. Nonconformism is as old as establishment.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 13, 2007 2:11 PM

Re: The take-home message is that some may consider universal health care, progressive taxation, and a generous safety net to be "bad" because then people wouldn't need religion as much.

To what extent do churches in America substitute for government in the social security business? Maybe some, but not much or we wouldn't have the problems with poverty, homelessness, lack of health insurance etc. that we do.

Re: I have always been amazed at the knowledge and intelligence of the many Europeans I have met in my travels.

Are you sure that isn't just a selection bias? The Europeans you are meeting are the more cosmopolitan, better educated ones, while the xenophobes and non-English speakers avoid tourists like the plague.

Re: I think the explanation lies in the rise in education levels in the post war period, partially due to the welfare state allowing higher school leaving ages.

I disagree. The Europeans of the early 20th or even the later 19th century were not unschooled dolts. Universal and mandatory public education was introduced through most of Western Europe long before the World Wars. Nor, if you look at the figures, is it true that religious people in the US are necessarily ill-educated: that old canard needs to retired. In fact, religious participaion is actually more common among the middle class than among the poor.

Re: Ummm ... where did people get the idea that one should kill, e.g., Jews?

Nazi anti-Semitisnm was racially based, using a horrible mishmash of ill-digested Darwinism with some Nietzsche stirred in. There was no sense that the Jews should redeem themselves by converting to Christianity (as with medieval anti-Judaism).

Re: Where did people get the idea that a messianic dictator could solve Russia's problems?

That sort of thing is as ancient as politics. "Demagogue" is after all an ancient Greek word. And there were probably demagogues rising rabble in Sumeria even before Gil-Gamesh was born.

Posted by JonF | December 13, 2007 7:42 PM

interestingly, you could argue that its BECAUSE Europe became more secular, that the world wars were bloodier and more costly. That's not conventional wisdom but its worth noting the worst conflict was the Eastern Front war between Hitler & Stalin- both of whom were ferociously anti- Christian.

@ don Williams.
Hitler may have RAISED as a Catholic but by the time he was adult he believed that Christianity was a Jewish " slave religion " fit for only untermenschen. He actively persecuted the Polish Catholic Church and tolerated the German Catholics for political reasons. When the German catholic hierarchy objected to his euthanasia program for the disabled, he backed down.

Count me as one who thinks that there is a connection between Europe's secularization and its world wars. However, i think the connection is more complex than frequently believed.

Posted by stonetools | December 13, 2007 8:38 PM

JonF,

I agree that religious participation does not necessarily track education of income levels perfectly. In particular, one should distinguish between being religious in terms of believing in God, the afterlife, and other supernatural doctrines, and being religious in terms of church participation. In Latin America, for example, all classes tend to be highly religious in terms of belief, the poor more than the middle class or the rich. But in terms of actually participating in organized religion- attending church regularly, voting for the "Catholic" parties, providing the active Catholic laity- the church in Latin America has traditionally been a mostly middle-class institution. This is still true although less so now than a hundred years ago, due to outreach efforts to the poor on the part of the Church.

The debate over whether Hitler was a Christian is an old and somewhat silly one. Suffice it to say that not only did he not believe in the Christian God, he didn't believe in a personal God at all- the Nazi "God" to the extent they had one was a more of a blind force of nature.

Posted by Hector | December 13, 2007 11:05 PM

In regards education it is the science that counts, people can be highly educated but profoundly ignorant if their education is confined to the arts. My mother has a PHD in Philology (language) but no science education so she cannot get evolution. The US education system is biased towards the liberal art with most science/engineering postgrads coming from abroad thus leaving a gap for religion to corrupt the population.

Posted by Tim | December 14, 2007 4:30 AM

"Re: I have always been amazed at the knowledge and intelligence of the many Europeans I have met in my travels.

Are you sure that isn't just a selection bias? The Europeans you are meeting are the more cosmopolitan, better educated ones, while the xenophobes and non-English speakers avoid tourists like the plague."

Actually many of my European connections are through family and none of them have any university training. Others are those I have met traveling with my cousins on motorcycles...not exactly a crowd of hip, wealthy urbanites...well actually I have found it to be a pretty good cross section of socio-economic classes.

The many Europeans I have met from shop keepers to professors all seem to have a stronger foundation in the basics of science and history than most college graduates I know here. Actually my crowd of acquaintances here is almost entirely urban, college-educated, and white.

Posted by Ricky | December 14, 2007 3:18 PM

Re: In regards education it is the science that counts, people can be highly educated but profoundly ignorant if their education is confined to the arts. My mother has a PHD in Philology (language) but no science education so she cannot get evolution. The US education system is biased towards the liberal art with most science/engineering

The above is simply nonense. You don't need a PhD in biology to know about evolution since it's taught in any intro-biology class, even in high school. Nor does learning about evolution somehow prevent one from accepting religious beliefs. To be sure, you can't simultaneously accept Darwin and Biblical literalism, but the latter is a distinct aberration, nor at all common in Christianity. The major churches have no quarrel with Darwin, and, at a guess, more Christians accept evolution than dispute it.

Re: The many Europeans I have met from shop keepers to professors all seem to have a stronger foundation in the basics of science and history than most college graduates I know here.

But again, I think there's a selection bias: you're meeting the kinds of people you want to meet, not a random selection you have no control over. (Likewise, and very much so, with family connections). I also tend to meet a lot of smart and learned people when I travel-- and I have done almost all my traveling in the US and Canada. But I prefer intelligent conversation to stupid, vacuous chit-chat (And I think the brighter one is the more developed one's conversation skills anyway) so I am much more likely to have a lengthy chat with a bright person than a dull-witted one, and I will remember the smart person I talked with, whiel the ignorant doofus I ignored is just a blur in my memory. (Yes, that makes me sounds like snob. Oh well.). This applies in reverse as well: you will attract people who find your wits and conversation, even on a very casual level, worth their time. Like attracts like.
When it comes to the people, and excluding recent immigrants, I don't think Europe and the US are very different at all. It's only been the last generation that the political cultures have pulled away from each other-- and that's the doing of governments, not the people themselves And no, our government is not a perfect representation of the American people-- far from it. Ditto for European governments.

Posted by JonF | December 15, 2007 12:23 AM

@ Neo :"Exactly what religion did Hilter and Stalin espouse?"

The Protestant Reich Church was formed by Adolf Hitler in 1933, by merging 28 regional churches into one Church.

While it's true that Stalin followed the Marxist line that religion should be abolished. National Socialism tended to persecute churches that disagreed with it, but wasn't completely opposed to religion.

Posted by ARM | December 15, 2007 1:53 PM