15 May 2010

Why is America so much more religious than Europe?




The theory also fits with experience in Latin America:


The essay also disputes the phenomena of significant secularisation in Europe:



Anonymous said...


Andries043 said...

This explanation seems initially plausible, but is completely misguided. There is more than three centuries of religious freedom in the Netherlands, but it is not a religious country anymore.

Lee Crawfurd said...

Do you have an alternative hypothesis?

I think that it maybe has something to do with urbanisation - Europe being more densely populated and therefore more urbanised, with cities forcing people to interact with a wider variety of perspectives. But I have no evidence for that hypothesis. 

Andries043 said...

On second thoughts, the blog post may be right about Latin America, but they try to explain too much with religious freedom. Religion is a complex phenomenon and cannot be explained with just one factor.

I in the Netherlands and do not know very much about religion in the USA.

What I think may be factors.
1. social pressure: you are not a good person if your religion does not tell you what is good and bad. This pressure does not exist in the Netherlands.
2. religion works to relieve anxiety which may be stronger in the USA due to poor social security and little job security
3. people tend to move more in the USA. Church help to expand your social circle which is easy after you have just moved

Potterfan392 said...

I think it is because Europe has seen how much violence religion causes: from The Crusades, to The Spanish Inquisition, to the conflict in Ireland, to the Holocaust, European history is full of religious wars. The only occurrences of religious violence America has seen are the Salem Witch Trials and 9-11. While these events were certainly tragic, they did not approach the scale of fighting in Europe.

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