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I’d wager it is a matter of social forces at play. From my experience, though many European nations have an official State religion, with other flavors tolerated, expressed, etc, the United States has no official State faith (though one could argue that “Christianity” as an umbrella designation serves this purpose socially).
These are rather old stats, but they may be helpful. It seems that compared to most other Western countries the US population could be described as very religious. Some folks say that it is because of the First Amendment that the US has such a religious make up.
For example, Thomas Paine: “For myself, I fully and conscientiously believe, that it is the will of the Almighty, that there should be a diversity of religious opinions among us: it affords a larger field for our Christian kindness. Were we all of one way of thinking, our religious dispositions would want matter for probation; and on this liberal principle, I look on the various denominations among us, to be like children of the same family, differing only, in what is called, their Christian names.”
There are particular centers of extreme religious belief such as Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah in the US. These are the population centers of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, their polygamy and in-breeding is evidenced in the abnormally high occurance of Fumarase deficiency, which causes mental retardation. From the Wiki: “Fumarase deficiency is extremely rare. Until a few years ago scientists knew of only thirteen cases worldwide. However, recently twenty additional cases have been documented in the border towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah”
The reason I find these areas interesting and the overall taste of Conservative Evangelical Christianity repulsive is that in public discourse in the US folks often complain that Iraqis have more allegiance to their form of Islam than to the State of Iraq. Generally I think the same is probably an accurate representation of the US population. That is, religious people in the US place their religious identification above their national loyalty. In short, I posit they are Christian before they are American but are the first to accuse a fellow countryman with whom they disagree "unpatriotic" or "unamerican".
Also, although, evidently (I didn’t know before this discussion) in the UK the Church of England has representation in the House of Lords, the US elects ministers fairly regularly to political office; and religious interest groups are very active in American political life.
It should be noted that in the US, in most of the country, the very term Atheist is a pejorative tied at least historically, in recent times, to the 1950’s pejorative “Communist”, meaning basically Un(anti)-American. “Under God” was added to the US Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, to contrast the Godly US against the Atheist Soviet Union. A Baptist minister, Francis Bellamy, originally penned the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892 to instill a sense of national unity following the Civil War (complete with an extended arm salute which was removed in favor of the over the heart position when the Nazis monopolized the gesture as their gig for history to come).
Interestingly, he did not include “Under God”, and even more intriguing, he was a socialist.
As for a model, I’m not so sure. France pretty much has a separation of Church and State, like the US, though most of the population (67% in 1994) seems to profess to be Catholic.
I think this is one of the reasons Dawkin is doing what he is doing, that is to inject Atheism into the public discourse in an aggressive (inflammatory?) way (perhaps the only language the far-Right responds too), so that the discussion can begin in the public sphere. This seems to be the trajectory of most civil rights issues (Dawkin explicitly compares his project to gay rights activism in public conversation), in the US. That is, they (civil rights) begin with a minority becoming very vocal about the issue, and then the gloves come off for a few years (or decades) until the population comes around, and the old, previous perspective becomes a refuge of intolerant fascist pricks. But I could be wrong. |
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