THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF REAGAN GO WE (via Daniel Merriman):

Discussion: Secular Europe and Religious America: Implications for Transatlantic Relations (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, April 21, 2005)

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Council on Foreign Relations co-hosted a luncheon roundtable entitled "Secular Europe and Religious America: Implications for Transatlantic Relations" on April 21, 2005 at the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C.

According to a 2002 Pew Global Attitudes survey, there are striking differences in public opinion between the U.S. and European countries on issues such as the importance people attach to religion in their lives and the linkage they perceive between belief in God and morality. The survey shows that a large majority of Americans consider religion important in their personal lives and closely associate religion and morality. Furthermore, Pew Forum surveys over several years show that Americans are generally more comfortable with religion playing a major role in public life. In contrast, Europeans generally place much less importance on religion in their lives, and general indicators show that major churches in Europe are declining in terms of membership, recruitment of clergy, financial contributions and overall public influence. The Pew Forum convened distinguished experts Peter Berger, John Judis and Walter Russell Mead to analyze these differences between the U.S and Europe and to assess their impact on transatlantic relations.

Speakers:
Peter Berger, Professor of Sociology and Theology and Director, Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs, Boston University
John Judis, Visiting Scholar, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Senior Editor, The New Republic
Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign Relations

Presider:
Luis Lugo, Director, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life [...]

Remarks of Walter Russell Mead [...]

he association between modernity and secularization has broken down in the U.S. and in many other countries and parts of the world. The promise of the secular enlightenment – its ability to tame history and create a smooth peaceful future for the world – has been unfulfilled in the experience of many people. You can argue that Hiroshima and the Holocaust are the root causes behind the return – not only to religion – but to a more colorful and apocalyptic kind of religion in much of the world today. The idea that the historical process could lead to the destruction of human life and human civilization became terribly real as a result of Hiroshima. This common fear led to an uncertainty as to whether programs of secular betterment inevitably led to calamity. The facts of the Holocaust – that it arose in the center of Europe; that it is not the only case of irrational mass hatred and genocide, armed with the weapons of modernity, to occur in recent memory – suggest that secular modernity doesn't tame history. Rather, it may empower the dark forces that people have feared in the past. And this may be one reason why the secularization model has broken down in much of the world today.

Let me end with the most controversial item I want to address today, which is to give a sense of the way that red-state America might look at Europe – at the connection between European politics and religious history. Partly because John and Peter are both right – that the academy in the U.S. is more like Europeans in its thinking than the rest of Americans – there has not been a lot of organized thought given from the perspective of red state America as to what Europe is and why Europe is the way it is. We're beginning to see some of this discussion emerge with the formation of a counter-academy and a counter-establishment. This trend builds on a covenantional sense of history that is very strong in the American mind. These folks might say that history, for us, the chosen people, is a record of our dealings with God and of God's responses to our behavior. If red state America looked carefully at Europe – which it does not – it would think that Christianity is what made Europe great; that Christian civilization – whether in a Protestant or a Catholic form – was the cause of Europe's blessing. In other words, a religious person would say God's blessing to Europe was contingent upon its faithful response to the message of the Gospel.

Red state America would draw comparisons between stories in the Hebrew Scriptures and Europe's reduced religiosity during the idolatrous worship of the nation-state in the late 19th early century leading up to the catastrophe of World War I. The people turned away from worshipping God so He punished them. Did they listen? No. They went from worshipping Him to worshipping the nation state. And when that was seen to fail in World War 1, they did not return to God. No, they turned to communism and fascism - even darker forms of idolatry. And then He really whacked them. But did they listen? No.

The ideals of communism and fascism are not popular in Europe today; rather the people participate in the worship of a consumer utopia of sorts. I think Pope Benedict XVI might echo some of these sentiments. What you see now in much of Europe is that it has lost the biological will to live. A red state American might say that Europeans are failing to reproduce themselves and are being visibly supplanted by Muslims who at least believe in God, even if they are of the wrong religion. This is a portrayal of American red state view of the last 100 years of European history. I'm trying to channel the opinions of people who don't have opinions on this subject, and I realize it's kind of a risky thing to do.

If you plug the data points into a certain set of cultural values and beliefs, you will see this is a fairly accurate portrayal. In recent months - as Americans from the red states have taken more notice of the intellectual and political climate in Europe - you have started to hear some of these sentiments communicated, especially the relationship between the lack of fertility in Europe and the lack of religious belief.

The savagery and rapidity of Europe's decline during its 20th Century experiment with secularism has likely inocculated us permanently against the disease.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 19, 2005 10:58 PM