I don’t know if there is healthy religion and unhealthy religion. On that I remain agnostic. But I do know that America maintains a healthy number of religious people compared to Europe. And I think I know why.
Whereas Lutheranism is the official religion of Sweden, and Anglicanism of England, and Catholicism of Spain, the United States has no official religion. At least technically, we keep religion out of politics. And that was kind of the point. Massachusetts could remain Congregationalist and Pennsylvania Quaker, and Virginia Episcopalian…but there would be no religious tests to serve in the federal government.
And this has led to an unexpected result. It might surprise you to learn that Tony Blair is <a href="My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington-B. Obama
converting to Catholicism, but it wont much concern the Brits.
By contrast with the United States, whose First Amendment prohibits any establishment of religion, there is a Church of England “by law established,” with the queen as its supreme governor. And yet, while polls indicate that nearly half of Americans go to church each week, services of this established church are now regularly attended by fewer than 2 per cent of the English population, while the total for all Christian churches is around 7 per cent.
Imagine an official religion only adhered to by 2% of the population? More properly, compare the 7% of Britons that attend any kind of church with the 50% of Americans that do so. The simplest explanation for this is that mixing up religion and politics will kill the religion. Maybe that is a desirable goal…but it certainly isn’t the result most would have predicted.
In America, the only thing less electable than an atheist is a Muslim.
The response to a theoretical Mormon candidate is far less negative than the response to a Muslim candidate or an atheist. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Likely Voters say they would never consider voting for a Muslim Presidential candidate. Sixty percent (60%) say the same about an atheist.
Even homosexuals are more electable that atheists. Atheists are complete pariahs in American political culture. Not so, in England:
We British not only don’t do God, we are effectively a pagan nation — and that goes for our politicians…
…No British prime minister has been a Catholic, and it would have been politically very difficult for Mr. Blair to convert when he was in office (think of Northern Ireland, apart from anything else). A neglected footnote to our history is that a majority of prime ministers for the past century were by origin Protestant Dissenters, in the old term, from outside the Church of England: H. H. Asquith grew up as a Congregationalist; David Lloyd George a Baptist; Neville Chamberlain a Unitarian; Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher Methodists.
More to the point, only a minority of 20th-century prime ministers were Christians as adults, having any serious personal religion. The impious majority includes Winston Churchill. His “Macmurray” was Winwood Reade, who wrote a once-famous book published in 1872. “The Martyrdom of Man” was called “a bible for secularists,” though Nietzsche-and-water might be better: Churchill learned from Reade that God is dead and that man is master of his own destiny in a cruel world.
Of course, Churchill paid lip service to the outward forms — christenings, weddings and funerals in church — and he would invoke the Almighty rhetorically. But neither he nor other British pols ever made an open parade of faith, certainly not in the way that United States presidential candidates are obliged to. And it’s very hard to imagine an American equivalent of Norman Tebbit.
As cabinet minister and Conservative party chairman in the 1980s, Mr. Tebbit was one of Mrs. Thatcher’s most effective lieutenants, a tough, populist right-winger — and a self-proclaimed atheist. Even the believing prime ministers kept politics and religion separate: Harold Macmillan was a pious High Churchman, and he used to say that if the people want moral guidance they should get it from their bishops, not their politicians.
There is some neglected American history, too. Our first Christian communicant president may have been our seventh, Andrew Jackson. Certainly we could never elect someone like this today:
“Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.” -Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
Jefferson’s point was that we needed to give up on coercion in religion. Jefferson, like most modern Europeans, had seen too much bloodshed over theological differences. Ironically, he thereby preserved (and probably strengthened) the vitality and observance of religion in the United States.
Faith-based programs and government backed wingnuttery on things like Terri Schiavo and stem cell research are just the types of things that corrupt religion, give it a bad name, and lead people away from the faith.
Too bad the Republicans don’t realize that the true prescription for secularism is false piety combined with state sanctioned coercion.
It’s ironic that a bunch of unitarians saved Christianity…from itself.