‘Religious America, Secular Europe’

Abstract

This chapter offers an overview of the religious trajectories of the United States and of the countries in Western and Northern Europe from the later eighteenth century to the early twenty-first. There is special focus on changes in the years around 1800, those around 1900, and in the later twentieth century. In the nineteenth century the USA was moving in very different directions from many of the countries of continental Europe, but American pluralism was paralleled by that of Britain. From about 1890, Britain and the USA began to move apart. Secularizing trends were common to both countries, but the countervailing factors were much stronger in the USA. Meanwhile, many other European countries were differently religious from the USA, but not necessarily less religious. Only in the 1970s can we begin to speak of a clear divide between a more ‘religious’ America and a more ‘secular Europe’.