Comment by usrusr
21 days ago
Not when it comes to religion though: the European way (and I feel very much like considering Canadians something like honorary Europeans these days) was forged in painful wars stemming from and fueled by influence of religion on politics, and abuse of religion by politics. Both on the collective level, not so much on the individual level. The European way is all about having a strong firewall between religion and politics, to keep the former out of the later. Freedom from.
The American way is completely devoid of that concept. It's all built on that Pilgrim Fathers founding myth and only ever cares about keeping the state from getting in the way of individual beliefs. It's so focused on that part and only that part that even an almost-all-out theocracy would be fine as long as it did not mess with individual beliefs. "Freedom to" without the tiniest trace of "freedom from".
This is factually incorrect. Even though in most European countries there is a formal separation of religion and state, there is nothing that "forbids" any political party from having a strong religious affiliation. In fact, in nearly every European country there are major political parties with a strong Christian affiliation. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_democracy
There are even countries which have political parties that are Islamic affiliated.
The separation between religion and state refers to two things: the state not being able to enforce any religious aspects on citizens (freedom TO exercise any religion without interference from government), and religious entities not being able to influence or pressure the government outside the electoral process (freedom TO govern without interference from religious entities). Neither of these things prevents a political party founded on religious beliefs to participate in the electoral process.
Parent never said that political parties were forbidden from having a religious affiliation. Yet, the 'Christian' in European 'Christian democracy' is not remotely comparable to the role of religion in the society of the USA.
The USA is overtly and intentionally Christian: American banknotes have "In God We Trust" emblazoned on one side, and schoolchildren (usually) recite an oath pledging allegiance to "one nation under God". Christian democracy, on the other hand, usually stands for a loosely defined, mildly conservative political ideology in a strictly secular system of governance.
> The European way is all about having a strong firewall between religion and politics
I find this quite contrary to my experience of e.g. modern Germany, Spain, Poland, Italy where many politicians are explicitly religious, laws are written with majority religious affiliation in mind, religious taxes may still be levied. Even France still feels in many ways like a "catholic country", even if they do have good explicit separation of church and state.
I would have said that government and (Christian) religion are completely inextricable for most Europeans, even if the majority of the population isn't seriously devout or even practicing.
Things like church taxes handled by the state in Germany (entirely opt-in, even when it's effectively opt-out for individuals opted in by their parents) have the opposite effect though, they make the churches boring institutions (except for the occasional child abuse wtf that haunts them just like any other church) far from any radicalization.
When you dig deeper in Germany it gets surprisingly murky, e.g. bishops not paid out of those church taxes but out of regular state taxes, e.g. those paid by atheists and Muslims, which dates back to Napoleonic age secularization when those payments were introduced as a (meager) compensation for the enormous income the (catholic) church had from being worldly lords of enormous realms. But this as well contribute to keeping the churches out of politics. They know pretty well what is their place and what isn't.