A few years ago I was having breakfast in a hotel in Austin, Texas. At the next table sat two middle-aged men in business suits, both reading newspapers. One looked up and said: "The situation is really heating up in the Middle East." He paused, then continued: "Just as the Bible said it would." Not long after this I was in a London hotel on a Sunday morning. I thought it would be nice to attend an Anglican Matins service. I went to the concierge, a young Englishman named Warren--clearly not an intern from Pakistan. I asked him where the nearest Anglican church was and added, "Church of England parish." He looked at me with a blank look, then said, "Is this sort of like Catholic?" I said, "Well, not quite." What impressed me was not that this young Englishman evidently did not go to church, but that he actually did not know what the Church of England was--his country's state church, whose head is Queen Elizabeth II.

It is often said that modernity brings about a decline of religion, a notion dignified by the term "secularization theory." Most sociologists of religion now agree that this theory has been empirically falsified. (I myself held to the theory until, beginning in the 1970s, the data made it increasingly difficult to do so.) The theory fails spectacularly in explaining the difference between America and Europe. It is hard to argue that Belgium is more modern than the United States. A European travelling in India will expect to encounter all sorts of exotic phenomena, including a lot of religion. He is likely to feel much less out of place travelling in the United States. Consequently, he will be the more surprised when encountering what will appear to him as American exotica, such as the inexplicable American penchant for religiosity. Some time ago a German professor of my acquaintance lectured at the University of Texas (also in Austin). He felt very much at home--until Sunday morning, when he hired a car to explore the Texas countryside. He was bewildered by a massive traffic jam in downtown Austin, until he realized that it was caused by large numbers of people going to church. He then turned on the car radio and found that most stations were broadcasting Evangelical services. I would not be surprised to learn that upon his return to Germany he conveyed impressions of the bizarre experience he'd had in Texas.

Intellectual curiosity is always aroused by exceptions. Much has been written to the effect that religion is a part of "American exceptionalism." But in reality, most of the world, not just the United States, is characterized by an explosion of passionate religious movements. The real exception is Europe. Explaining European secularity, especially its contrast with America, is one of the most interesting topics for the study of contemporary religion.

Both the Catholic and Protestant churches are in deep trouble in Europe. Attendance at services has declined sharply for many years, there is a shortage of clergy because of lagging recruitment, finances are in bad shape, and the churches have largely lost their former importance in public life. Western and central Europe is the most secularized area in the world. This has become so much a part of European culture that the term "Eurosecularity" seems appropriate. Originally a phenomenon centered in the northern part of the Continent, this secular culture spreads quite rapidly as other regions are absorbed into it. This was the case in the south, in Italy after World War II and very dramatically in Spain after the demise of the Franco regime. I would venture a prediction: Countries are pulled into secularity to the degree by which they are integrated into Europe. Integration into Europe means signing on to Eurosecularity (the legal norms, after all, are contained in the famous EU acquis) along with the rest of the "Europe package." This is already noticeable in Ireland and Poland. I doubt whether Eastern Orthodoxy will provide immunity against this cultural penetration. The case of Greece would seem to confirm this view; it remains to be seen what happens in Romania and Bulgaria as they too are absorbed into Europe. If my prediction is correct, this has obvious policy implications: As time goes by, "new Europe" will increasingly look like "old Europe." If one looks for vibrant religion in Europe, one may have to look farther east--most importantly to Russia, where a remarkable revival of Orthodox Christianity is underway. But that is another story.

European politics eschews the sort of religiously tinged rhetoric that is common in America, and Europe lacks the massive presence of Evangelical Protestantism, which is a crucial part of the American scene. Europeans have a hard time understanding this presence and commonly perceive it in simplistic stereotypes: Bible-thumping rednecks spouting right-wing fundamentalism. Britons have a particular difficulty here, since Evangelicalism in the United Kingdom has traditionally been linked firmly to left-leaning agendas of social reform. American Evangelicalism, of course, is a much more complicated phenomenon, by no means coinciding neatly with right-of-center politics. It is worth remembering that born-again Christianity first attracted widespread media attention during the presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter.

But while there are clear differences between the United States and Europe, we should also keep in mind that survey data on religion are always somewhat suspect. Americans may exaggerate their religiousness in response to survey questions, just as Europeans may exaggerate their secularity. To illustrate, a few years ago some busy sociologists compared responses on church attendance in a particular locality with the number of cars in church parking lots, discovering that there were fewer cars than the responses would lead one to expect. Conversely, when the ferry Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea a few years ago, resulting in the death of a large number of Swedes, the churches were packed for memorial services in Sweden--a country that consistently leads in indicators of secularity. And the caricature of a "religious America" and a "secular Europe" ignores the fact that there are major differences within America itself. The center and the south of the country are more religious than the two coasts. And, at least since the middle of the 20th century, there has been an American intelligentsia, much more secular than the rest of the population, that forms a cultural elite, with considerable power in education, the media and the law. Much of American politics since 1963 (the date of the first Supreme Court decision concerning prayer in public schools) can be much better understood if one sees it as, in part, a struggle between the activists representing secular and religious America. It so happens, moreover, that the two sets of activists have become important as constituencies, respectively, of the two major political parties.

But this simplified picture--of God-fearing, red-state Americans standing up for faith and country against the coastal blue-state citizens aligned with post-Christian Europeans--leaves out one important matter: namely, that the religious situation on both continents is marked by the pervasive influence of pluralism.

Religion on the Market

The first, and often overlooked, point is that the secular choices of west Europeans and the religious choices of American southerners are rooted in the same experience with modernity. This is because, rather than being a catalyst for secularization, modernity in fact leads to pluralism. And it is pluralism that explains the two religious spheres.

Through most of history, the majority of human beings lived in communities with a high degree of homogeneity of beliefs and values. Modernity undermines such homogeneity: through migration and urbanization, by which people with very different beliefs and values are made to rub against each other; through mass education and mass literacy, which open up cognitive horizons unknown to most individuals in pre-modern societies; and most dramatically, through mass communication. These changes have been underway for at least several centuries, but they are now being rapidly diffused and intensified by globalization. In today's world one can find very few places that have been left untouched by this pluralist dynamic. Religion is no exception.

In both North America and Europe, pluralism has transformed religion both institutionally and in the consciousness of individuals. Religious institutions, many of which had been accustomed to monopoly status, must now deal with competition. In effect, there emerges a religious market in which individuals can, indeed must, make choices. On the level of consciousness, this means that religion is no longer taken for granted, but becomes the object of reflection and decision.

Such a religious market is obviously enhanced if many religious communities coexist in the same social space and if their freedom to operate is secured in law. On both counts, America has had an obvious historical advantage over Europe. But the pluralist dynamic begins to make its impact even in countries where one religious community continues to command the nominal allegiance of most of the population, or where one such community continues to be recognized as the official religion of the state. France is an example of the first case, England of the second. While relatively few French people adhere to a religious community other than the Catholic one, Catholicism is certainly no longer taken for granted as the normal religion in society, and individuals minimally have the choice of having little or nothing to do with it. In England the legal establishment of the Anglican church continues, but this has less and less influence in the lives of most English people. In both countries there is a religious market with many options. That few people exercise this option is not the point. Rather, it is that pluralism has led to a far greater degree of religious choice than was available before. In America the term "religious preference"--tellingly derived from the language of consumer economics--has become part of the common discourse. The term may just as well be applied to the European situation.

The loss of the taken-for-granted status of religion in the consciousness of individuals means that they are forced to make choices--that is, to exercise their "preference." The choices can be secular. They can also be religious. As we have seen, Europeans make more secular choices, Americans more religious ones. But even an individual who declares adherence to a very conservative version of this or that religious tradition has chosen to do so and will be at least subliminally aware of the possibility of reversing that decision at some future time.

Furthermore, both in Europe and in America, there are large numbers of people who pick and choose from the religious traditions available on the market. Sociologists on both continents have noted and studied this phenomenon. Danièle Hervieu-Léger, who has worked mostly on French data, uses the term "bricollage"--loosely translatable as "tinkering", as when a child assembles and reassembles the pieces of a Lego set. Robert Wuthnow, who has analyzed a mass of American data, calls the same phenomenon "patchwork religion." There is a difference though. Europeans usually do their tinkering in an unorganized manner (that is, they don't join or create religious institutions that reflect their particular form of bricollage), whereas Americans, with their deep cultural propensity to form associations, are more likely to tinker within an organization and perhaps form another denomination. One reason for this may be that it is very easy to form a religious group in America, with tax-exempt status following from the simple act of incorporation. In many European countries, by contrast, there are more complicated legal procedures before a religious group is officially registered and entitled to certain privileges in terms of taxation, owning property and the like.

On both continents, there has occurred a proliferation of "spirituality" in recent years. People will say: "I am not religious. But I am spiritual." The meaning of such statements is not fixed. Quite often they indicate some sort of New Age faith or practice--believing in a continuity of personal and cosmic reality, reaching that reality by means of meditational exercises, finding one's true self by discovering the "child within." But quite often the meaning is simpler: "I am religious, but I cannot identify with any existing church or religious tradition." Needless to say, if such an act of non-identification has material advantages--no financial obligations to churches, no demands for volunteer services--this makes it all the more attractive.

British sociologist Grace Davie has described this attitude as "believing without belonging"--without, that is, belonging to any existing religious institution. It describes people on both continents. It is reasonable to suppose that the attitude of "believing without belonging" is more common in "blue" than in "red" states in America, though I am not aware of any studies to prove this. There are far fewer traffic jams in Massachusetts than in Texas on Sunday morning. Yet, the greater Boston area has an astonishing number of centers devoted to teaching meditation or providing "alternative" treatments for every conceivable disease.

But there is also a phenomenon, more common in Europe than America, that may be called "belonging without believing." Another sociologist, Jose Casanova, has described the continuing public role of religion even in countries with a high degree of secularization. In Germany, for example, there are no longer state churches, and there is complete religious freedom. But all religious institutions registered as "corporations of public law" (which includes all but the most minor ones) have certain legal privileges. Among these is the service by the state of collecting the (somewhat misnamed) "church tax." This amounts to eight percent of the individual's income tax--a considerable amount, depending on income. An individual who does not want to pay this tax can simply declare himself to be religiously unaffiliated (konfessionslos) and thus instantly save quite a bit of money. What is surprising is how many--indeed the majority at least in the western part of the country--have not done it. When asked why, they give different answers--because they might need the church at some point in their lives, because they want the church to give moral guidance for their children, because they see the church as important for the moral fabric of society. Davie has coined another apt term for this phenomenon--"vicarious religion." This means that one does not want to be personally involved with the church but wants it to be there for others or for the society as a whole. This attitude is rarer in America. But on both continents, as tax-funded social services are having increasing financial difficulties, people look to the churches to help provide such services.

A Religious Modernity?

Perceptions matter. Indeed, perceptions can be hardened into social realities. Modernization does not have to be inimical to religion. But if it is so perceived, conflict will necessarily result. Intellectuals are the primary definers of how reality is to be perceived. Thus, in comparing the different trajectories of modernity and religion on the two sides of the Atlantic, it is important to take into account the different roles of intellectuals.

Much of the way modern intellectuals think stems from questions first raised in the Enlightenment. Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb in her recent book, aptly entitled The Roads to Modernity (2004), actually distinguishes between three versions of the Enlightenment--the British (in England as well as Scotland), the French and the American. The sharpest contrast is between the latter two. (While the British Enlightenment was rather similar to the American one in its treatment of religion, the close relation between church and state in Britain led to a trajectory of secularization much closer to the development of continental Europe.) The French Enlightenment was sharply anti-clerical, in parts openly anti-Christian. Catholicism was an integral component of the ancien régime, and opposition to the latter naturally entailed opposition to the former. This was epitomized in Voltaire's famous cry, "Destroy the infamy"--the infamy being the Catholic Church. The French Revolution made a valiant effort to do so. It did not succeed, but what followed it was more than a century of struggle between two visions of France--one conservative and Catholic, the other progressive and anti-clerical. The latter won a decisive victory with the Law of 1905. Separation here meant something quite different from the prohibition of "establishment of religion" in the American Constitution. For the French, it meant the republic as "laïque", thoroughly cleansed of all religious symbolism. This ideal of "laïcité" influenced democratic thought and practice throughout continental Europe as well as Latin America. The republic now claimed the ideological monopoly previously held by the church.

The American Enlightenment was very different indeed. In Himmelfarb's words, it expressed "the politics of liberty", as against the French "ideology of reason." The authors and politicians of the American Enlightenment were not anti-clerical--in any case, there was no clergy to be against--and they were not anti-Christian. At most, they were only vaguely deist. With no ancien régime to overthrow and no state church to rail against, there was no perception in 18th-century America of religion and reason being antagonistic to each other. Thus, the American Enlightenment could not serve as a legitimation of secularity in either state or society. (It has only been since the middle of the 20th century that the federal judiciary has made decisions with a pronounced affinity with the French "ideology of reason.")

As an outgrowth of the French approach, European intellectuals have created a strongly secular "high culture." This has served as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, as more and more people outside the intelligentsia take their cultural cues from the it. Thus, to be modern in Europe, to be with the times and against backwardness, has come to mean being secular. This was not the case in America--at least not until recently. The "Europeanization" of the American intelligentsia should probably be dated from the 1950s and reached its full force in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Today there is indeed an intelligentsia in America for whose members religion comes, if at all, in plain wrappers. It is now dominant in elite culture, in academia and in the mainstream media. In recent decades this intelligentsia has not only had to confront an increasingly vocal popular opposition, but also a self-consciously religious group of intellectuals at odds with elite secularity. (I must leave it to historians to trace the stages through which the American intelligentsia has become "Europeanized." Minimally, this development shows that America, despite its historical experience and its free market for religion, is not immune to secularization.)

Civil Society & Religion

As one seeks to understand the religious difference between the two continents, one must pay attention to the difference between the ways in which education is organized. In much of Europe, the educational system was, and still is, under centralized state control. France is the clearest case of this--with its curriculum controlled by the Ministry of Education in Paris and its teachers (significantly called the "corps of teachers") trained in state institutions before fanning out throughout the country. When primary and then secondary education became compulsory, these teachers had unprecedented power to inculcate children in Enlightened secularity. Unless there was a religious school nearby, parents were helpless in the face of this indoctrination.

By contrast, until very recently, the American educational system was under the exclusive control of local governments. If un-Enlightened parents did not like what teachers were telling their children, they could quite easily fire the teachers. This has changed somewhat, due to the increasing role of state government and the power of the teachers unions, but local government still controls most primary and secondary education in America. In any case, the effects of educational systems on secularization long antecede these recent developments in America. The 19th and early 20th centuries were probably the crucial period for these effects to occur on both continents. The centralized systems in Europe helped to exclude religion from the public square; the decentralized (ipso facto more democratic) American system allowed the wishes of religious parents to be honored. The dominant position of state churches in Europe has naturally provoked strong secularizing tendencies in politics. This first manifested itself in the growth of political parties and labor unions animated by various ideologies of the Left, most with a strong secular bent struggling against the alliance of throne and altar. There have been no analogues to this in American history.

Austria is a particularly clear case of this European phenomenon: The social-democratic Left built an entire subculture within which party members could live from kindergarten to old people's home. This subculture was self-consciously anti-clerical and indeed anti-Catholic. The conflict between a secular Left and a religious Right was strongest in Catholic countries in Europe, though there were less sharp Protestant analogues. Only after World War II did parallel processes of "secularization" on both Right and Left occur--the decline of the churches mirrored in the decline of an ideologically defined Left. But by then, as it were, the damage had been done.

It is interesting to note that the politicization of conservative religion in America was initially triggered by the 1963 Supreme Court decision banning prayer in the public schools. For large numbers of Americans it now seemed that the public schools would become agencies of secularization, and beyond that their very faith had become stigmatized by the most august institution in the society. Further perceived outrages against religious sensibilities, notably Roe v. Wade ten years later, built on this initial revulsion. Whether one shares these sensibilities or not, one can agree that what has been happening here is an offensive by a cultural elite to impose its views on the society. There is strong empirical evidence of the dominance of this secular elite in American academia. I don't know of data that would show whether the views on religion of this elite have filtered down to primary and secondary school teachers.

Modernity's Vanguard

America and Europe are, to paraphrase Talcott Parsons, the "vanguard societies" of Western modernity. But the differences between them make clear that there is no single paradigm of modernity--a matter of very great interest to non-Western societies on the path of modernization. The Israeli sociologist Shmuel Eisenstadt has written extensively about what he calls "alternate modernities." Thus, for example, it is of very great interest in the Muslim world or in India if one can show that modernity can come in both secular and religious versions. The current debate over the place of Islam in the Iraqi constitution provides a particularly clear example of alternate possibilities in the establishment of a modern democracy. One side conceives of the state as rigorously neutral in matters of religion, relegating the latter to private life (on the French model); the other recognizes the primacy of a particular religious tradition while eschewing coercion by the state and respecting the rights of minority communities (which appears to be the model in the minds of leading Shi'a, resembling the views of conservative Christians in America). And Iraq is by no means the only case of such a debate in the Muslim world.

The much-vaunted U.S. public diplomacy would have some good talking-points in explaining the American experience of combining the separation of church and state with the vibrant presence of religion in public life--an alternate religious modernity of remarkable relevance in many non-Western societies today. In the Muslim world, as elsewhere in the non-Western world, there are many groups that would like to establish this or that religious tradition as the official religion of the state, often accompanied by coercion of non-believers and followers of minority religions. But the European experience argues against establishment as a way to enhance the public role of religion. Wherever religion is closely identified with the state, resentment of the latter almost inevitably comes to include the former. By contrast, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the 19th century, the separation of church and state enshrined at the Founding of the American Republic allowed religion to flourish.

What of the future? Theoretically, it is possible to imagine dramatic changes in the place of religion on either continent or on both. History is full of unexpected religious upheavals. A time-travelling modern social scientist visiting the early 16th century, with all the research apparatus of his craft, would hardly have predicted the religious earthquake of the Reformation a few years down the line. All one can say is that, at present, there are no empirical indications that Europe is becoming more religious or America less so. There is at least an intimation of a change in Europe, due to the massive presence of large numbers of Muslims who are unwilling to play by the rules of laïcité. Conceivably this might lead to a reassessment in the majority population of the Christian roots of the much-vaunted "European values." But here, too, very different scenarios are possible.

Social trends do not occur in some inexorable way, independent of the ideas and actions of people. Modernity itself is not a force of nature, but is brought about by human beings thinking and acting in specific ways. It is not foreordained that modern societies must become secular. Whether they do or not depends on human agency--conscious choices by individual actors, sometimes by unintended consequences of these choices, by struggles for power and influence by mobilized individuals. Whether in America, Europe or the Middle East, there are choices to be made about the place of religion in society and in the state. For this reason it is important that alternate possibilities of choice be clearly understood.