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	Why Religion Still Matters So Much for Americans By David Quinn Irish Independent April 18, 2008 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/why-religion-still-matters-so-much-for-americans-1350692.html The Catholic Church will deservedly be dogged by the clerical sex abuse scandals for years to come. Therefore it was inevitable that this issue would be in the background, and sometimes in the foreground, as the Pope began his visit to America this week. However, the damage to the Church is not so total that American politicians are steering clear of the Pontiff as a result. On the contrary, Hillary Clinton said America is "blessed" to be hosting him, and Barack Obama stated that all Americans will be listening to the Pope's message of "hope and peace". John McCain for his part praised Benedict's "lifelong dedication to virtue and the authenticity of his principles serve as a guiding example to people throughout the world". What all this tells is that, despite the scandals, the main candidates in the US election calculate that there are more votes to be won than lost by praising the Pope. The fact that both Clinton and Obama feel obliged to jump on the papal bandwagon, even though they are both in favour of abortion right up to the moment of birth, tells its own story. America may have more than its fair share of anti-Catholic fundamentalists of both the secular and religious type, but, in general, Americans see religion, despite its faults, as a benign force and they see the Pope as the most important standard-bearer of Christianity in the world. Therefore, even if they disagree with the Catholic Church about various matters, especially those relating to sexual morality, they still think the world is better off with a Pope than without one. But Americans also feel this way because America is a religious country, relative to Europe at any rate. They 'get' religion. In general, they are not hostile towards it. A substantial minority of Americans go to church each week, and a majority have some contact with it on a regular basis. They feel they benefit from going to church. They believe it makes them better people and, in general, it does. Pope Benedict is a quintessential European. He is a product of European culture, European intellectual life, European Christianity. He is much more Old World than New World. He would rather play Mozart on his piano than watch a movie, but he knows that the Old World is now much more hostile towards religion in general, and Christianity in particular, than the New World. The Old World increasingly looks at religion through the eyes of Richard Dawkins. European secularism and America's relative religiosity are, in fact, two of the forces driving the Old and New Worlds apart. Europe can't understand why America, the most modern country in the world in every other respect, should be so religious. Many Americans can't understand why Europe, once so religious, is now so secular. In fact, we don't have to look too far for an answer. America is religious precisely because it is so modern and Europe is secular precisely because it was so religious. America was the first country in the world to formally separate church and state, one of the founding pillars of modernity. This protected the state from encroachments by the church, but it also protected the church from encroachments by the state. In Europe, kings interfered in affairs of popes and priests, pastors and preachers, far too often, and vice versa, with frequently disastrous consequences. In America, because there was no state-imposed religion in the European sense, Americans had much less reason to rebel against the church, whether Catholic or Protestant. In other words, separation of church and state helped the former and fostered a climate in America that turned out to be religion-friendly. Meanwhile in Europe people did eventually rebel against state-imposed religion sometimes to the extreme of resorting to state-imposed irreligion, as in revolutionary France and the Soviet Union. The Czech Republic is the most secular country in the world because of the wars of religion that tore it apart in centuries past as the state sought to impose one religion and crush others. In a way, the churches of Europe have only themselves to blame for this state of affairs. They mightily resisted the separation of church and state for a long time with the result that people turned their backs on them in droves. Much of Europe is now radically secular, hostile to religion, and wants to drive it out of public life completely in a kind of reverse intolerance. In America, meanwhile, religion is still very much part of public life. This is why American presidential candidates still talk about God and it's why they are so openly welcoming the Pope to America. Benedict XVI may be Old World but it's in the New World that he can expect to find the more receptive audience. He has found, and the Church has found, that America is friendly to religion because it never had a state religion. If it had discovered that 400 years ago rather than 40 years ago, things mightn't be so bad for it in Europe either.
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