News from the world about the religions

Religion and European Integration: Observations from America

by Peter L. Berger


[...] The comparison between Europe and the United States is theoretically strategic for the sociology of religion. Secularity (simply put, the decline in religious belief and practice) has commonly been seen as an inexorable consequence of modernization. Yet the United States, which can hardly be described as less modern than Western Europe, is robustly religious when compared with the latter. Reference is often made to "American exceptionalism" (sometimes favorably, sometimes not so). America is undoubtedly exceptional in many ways, but not when it comes to religion. Most of the world is religious, as is America – Europe is the exception (as stated in the title of a recent book by the British sociologist Grace Davie) – and it is that exception which begs for explanation. [...]

The conventional distinction is between "religious America" and "secular Europe". Things are rather more complicated - I will get to this in a moment. But, looked at from an American perch, there is something ironic about the current arguments for mention of the religious (or "Judaeo-Christian", or "Judaeo-Christian-Islamic") basis of so-called "European values" in the proposed constitution. The only mention of religion in the constitution of the United States is in the First Amendment, which both guarantees the free exercise of religion and prohibits its establishment by government – no mention of any religious basis for "American values". (The Declaration of Independence, which does contain some very vague language of this sort, is not part of the constitution.) Yet this omission has not been an obstacle to an exuberant development of religion. Could it be that it has actually been helpful to this development ? Alexis de Tocqueville certainly thought so. Is there a lesson here for Europe ?

Be this as it may, there are both differences and similarities in the place of religion on the two continents. (More precisely, the comparison refers to Western and Central Europe, the vortex of the alleged secularity. As one goes east and southeast from this region, one finds a very different situation.)

What is different?

All objective indices of religious behavior are much higher in America – in terms of church attendance, recruitment to the clergy, material support of the churches. There has been a high degree of "de-institutionalization" of religion in Europe. Both the Catholic and the Protestant churches are almost everywhere in a state of institutional crisis, with only some relatively small enclaves of traditional "churchliness".

By contrast, church life in America continues vigorously. There has been a decline in participation in the so-called "mainline" Protestant churches, much less so among Catholics. But there is one American phenomenon that is almost completely absent in Europe – the exuberant presence of Evangelical Protestantism, with some forty million Americans describing themselves as "born-again Christians". The same difference shows up in subjective indices – expressions of belief in God, salvation though Jesus Christ, life after death, and for that matter any of the traditional Christian doctrines.

If [Danièle] Hervieu-Léger is right (as in her recent book “Catholicisme, la fin d'un monde”), there has also been a decline in Europe of what she calls the "civilizational" role of religion – that is, the way in which entire cultures were shaped by Catholic, or Protestant, values, regardless of the fate of the churches. Thus America can still be seen as a Protestant civilization in a way in which, say, Scandinavia cannot.

But what is similar?

The most important similarity is individuation. This means that religion is no longer embedded in the culture in a taken-for-granted manner, but rather becomes an object of individual choices. Hervieu-Léger has called this phenomenon "bricolage" (the term suggests tinkering with a Lego set). Robert Wuthnow, referring to America, has used the term "patchwork religion" to describe the same phenomenon. On both continents this includes the people who say that they are not religious but "spiritual". Many of them are perpetual seekers (Hervieu-Léger calls them pilgrims) rather than resolute affirmers of this or that faith. In Europe these people express their religiosity in very diffuse ways, typically outside the churches. In America they frequently set up churches. The prototypical American church of this kind is the Unitarian-Universalist denomination, which officially defines itself as a community of seekers. (A telling joke: How does the Unitarian version of the Lord's Prayer begin ? "To Whom It may Concern".) Significantly, the denomination, though small, has experienced healthy growth.

I would argue that this phenomenon (and not secularity) is indeed a result of modernity, which pluralizes the life-world of individuals and makes taken-for granted certainty (in religion as in everything else) hard to come by. This pluralization is caused by a variety of modern developments – urbanization, mass migration, literacy, mass communication media. All of these confront the individual with a diversity of worldviews, value systems and lifestyles, between which he is compelled to choose. (Jean-Paul Sartre's notion of "being condemned to freedom" is doubtful as a description of the general human condition, but it applies neatly to the modern condition.) Modernity can occur under different political and legal regimes, but the pluralization it engenders is obviously enhanced under democratic regimes which guarantee religious liberty. When the churches can no longer rely on the police to fill their pews, they are forced to compete for the allegiance of uncoerced consumers of their services. This is so even in countries (like France, or Sweden) where one traditional church nominally contains the majority of the population. Even if no other churches are available in the individual's neighborhood, he is free not to adhere to a church at all or/and to put together his own religio-moral "patchwork".

Why the difference?

As already indicated, ever since de Tocqueville there has been the classical explanation of the vitality of American religion in terms of the separation of state and church. This is almost certainly a valid explanation. The withdrawal of state support forced American churches to compete, and competition makes for vital institutions. (It was possible to see this long before the recent introduction of economic theory into the sociology of religion by Rodney Stark and others, though it makes sense to think of a religious market in which certain economic processes occur.) Equally important, though, churches that are not identified with the state do not incur the resentments which, sooner or later, will be directed against the latter.

But this cannot be the whole story. If it were, the separation of church and state in France, more rigid than the American one, has now lasted for almost exactly a century, yet there are no signs that it has vitalized religious institutions in that country. Indeed, as soon as real religious liberty is introduced in a country, even if it still has an official religious establishment, there will be a de facto separation of church and state. This has long been the case in the democracies of Western Europe, with no discernible vitalization of the churches ensuing. There must be some other factors to account for the difference. I will mention three possible factors.

One, the chronology and the intensity of religious pluralism in America: It occurred from the beginnings of European settlement in America, with a large number of Protestant churches spreading throughout the colonies, none big enough to do in the others. Attempts at religious establishment, in New England by Congregationalists and in Virginia by Anglicans, soon failed because of this pluralism. The constitution of the Union then only ratified the pluralism that had preceded it. As Richard Niebuhr had pointed out, America generated a new type of religious institution, the "denomination", defined as a church which recognizes the right to exist of other churches. Even churches to whom such recognition is theologically repugnant are forced nevertheless to behave "denominationally" in the American situation. This is notably the case with the Roman Catholic church.

Two, again for historically explainable reasons, Americans have developed a genius for creating voluntary associations: Let three Americans be stranded on a desert island, and they will start four neighborhood associations. (The conventional view is that American culture is very individualistic. I think this is a mistake. Americans are much less individualistic than other Western cultures such as the French. Rather, they are "associationist" – a different matter altogether.) American religious pluralism has benefited from this cultural trait.

And three, the status of intellectuals differs greatly as between the two continents. Raymond Aron once called France the paradise of intellectuals, America their hell. This is a slight exaggeration, but it is still a valid insight. From the beginning America created a highly commercial culture, and businessmen tend to have a low opinion of intellectuals. This difference became very important for religion on both continents as primary education became universal and compulsory. In many European countries education has been a function of the central state. The cadres of teachers were then drawn from the lower ranks of an intelligentsia which tended to be more secularized than the general population.

By contrast, in America, until very recently, education was entirely run by local communities. The results are simple: In Europe, unless a religious school was nearby, children were exposed to secularizing indoctrination regardless of the wishes of their parents; in America, the parents could fire the teachers whose instruction they disliked. It may be added that the American Enlightenment, and thus the intelligentsia it spouted, was much less anti-clerical than its European cousin – which, again, may be related to the fact that there was no dominant "clerisy" against which Enlightened spirits could fulmigate (to paraphrase Voltaire, no infamy to be crushed).

Thus America is indeed different, but not without significant similarities. [...] America has been part of a “bourgeois Protestant” axis Amsterdam-London-Boston which early on developed a tradition of relative tolerance. The principle of voluntary association intensified as this axis moved westward and its tradition of tolerance embraced an ever-wider circle of religious groups – first within the Protestant fold, then taking in Catholics and Jews, and by now embracing any religious group that eschews ritual cannibalism.

What is the integrative power of Europe?

[...] If one asks how religion may relate to European integration, one must look at the role of religion in the public space of societies. In most of Western Europe one finds the phenomenon described by Grace Davie as "believing without belonging". As mentioned before, people put together (“bricoler”) some sort of religious worldview, but without actively adhering to a church. But there is also the obverse phenomenon – "belonging without believing". In this connection Davie has spoken of "vicarious religion": Many people don't make use of the church, but they want it to be there – just in case it may be needed, or just as a symbolic presence which one does not want to miss. Davie is correct, I think, in finding that such vicariousness is significant. Take Germany: The state collects a church tax and hands it on to the churches. This Kirchensteuer amounts to about eight percent of an individual's income tax – a not inconsiderable amount of money. This tax, unlike every other tax, is not compulsory. To be exempted from it, an individual merely has to declare himself without any religious affiliation (Konfessionslos). Not surprisingly, many people have made use of this easy way of increasing their disposable income. What is remarkable that most have not, including many who never set foot in a church. Their motives are often vague, yet finally quite clear: They want the church to be there as a symbolic presence, as some sort of moral authority, even if they do not need it at this point in their lives. But the need for this symbolic presence may suddenly manifest itself in public space in moments of crisis [...]. Vicariousness is not the same as irrelevance. It is conceivable that a renewed public role of the churches would emerge if Europe were subjected to a more long-lasting crisis. [...]

© IWM / Berger 2004