Understanding Why Americans Seem More Religious Than Other Western Powers
Understanding Why Americans Seem More Religious Than Other Western Powers
Church on Mainstreet by Don O’Brien via Flickr
by E. Brooks Holifield
This article first appeared in Sacred Matters housed at Emory University.
Posted: 02/15/2014 7:52 am EST
Updated: 02/15/2014 7:59 am EST
Many Western Europeans think of Americans as hopelessly, bafflingly, and dangerously, religious. Many Americans think of Western Europeans as distressingly, inexplicably, and unrelentingly, secular. In 2009, the German sociologist Hans Joas observed that “it is widely accepted that the United States is far more religious than practically any comparable European state.” And he noted Western European puzzlement: “The more secularized large parts of Europe became, the more exotic the religiosity of the United States seemed to European observers.” So why are Americans, compared with Western Europeans, seemingly so religious? And are we as religious as we seem?
Sixty percent of Americans say that religion is “very important” to them; only 21 percent of Western Europeans say that. How did we get that way? How did they get that way? And how different are we?
Maybe everyone is religious. Maybe sports fans who live or die each week with the fortunes of Manchester United or the Pittsburgh Steelers are as religious, in their own way, as earnest participants in churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples. And maybe the Americans who look on with outrage when some mob “desecrates” the flag are as devoted to a civil religion as the Pope is to the Catholic faith. But the sixty percent of Americans who say religion is “very important” to them and the seventy-nine percent of Western Europeans who just can’t bring themselves to say that, probably mean something more traditional. They probably mean that they believe—or don’t—in God; follow—or don’t—the Torah; cherish—or don’t—the Buddha; or devote themselves—or don’t—to the teachings of Mohammed the Prophet. In other words, most of them probably think conventionally about religion when someone asks if it is “very important” to them. But whether the question is about beliefs, practices, identity, the veneration of tradition, or some other familiar view of religion, most Americans answer it one way and most Western Europeans another. Let’s leave the Eastern Europeans out of view; they complicate matters. We are talking about Western Europe and the United States. That is more than enough.
Of course it is possible that neither Americans nor Western Europeans mean what they say. After all, some forty percent of Americans have told the Gallup pollsters for half a century that they could have been found the previous week in some religious building doing something religious. A few enterprising sociologists have come up, however, with some imaginative ways of counting, and they conclude that the actual number is closer to twenty percent. A few equally enterprising scholars who study religion in Europe have argued that in some countries, people may practice more religion than they admit. The American sociologist Phil Zuckerman found that Danes and Swedes didn’t practice much, but Zuckerman also learned that one inebriated believer confessed to a friend over a round of drinks that he believed in God. “I hope,” he said, “that you don’t think I’m a bad person.” But this simply pushes the question one step further back. Why might some Americans feel obligated to exaggerate their religious practice and some Europeans to minimize theirs?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/15/americans-more-religious_n_4780594.html
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