Challenge: Majority non-religious US by 2010.

[AYoungContrarian]

Your challenge is to make the United States a secularized country in the fashion of Canada or the UK by the year 2010. No ASB scenarios or PODs before 1900.

Can you make it happen? Perhaps make the boomers become less religious or have a faction of Generation X become hostile to religion similar to OTL Millenial Generation?

[JoeMulk]

Avoid Reagen's election by having a Republican president in the late 70s, preferably someone like Rocky who basically shows the religious right the door. So this could fit into a world where Ford is assasinated. Then a liberal Democrat, either Kennedy or Mondale gets elected in 80 and AIDS is somehow butterflied out of existence. In 84 a conservative Republican loses in a landslide and after that the GOP is forced to permanently run to the center.

[Cuāuhtemōc]

Avoid the 60s as it turned out.

[AYoungContrarian]

Originally Posted by Ringo Starr

Avoid the 60s as it turned out.

How so? Elaborate. Avoid the rise of drugs/hippies?

[Plumber]

Originally Posted by SVeach94

How so? Elaborate. Avoid the rise of drugs/hippies?

Avoid "silent majority" backlash

Butterfly away Vietnam, and the assassinations of X and MLK

[Cuāuhtemōc]

Originally Posted by SVeach94

How so? Elaborate. Avoid the rise of drugs/hippies?

Avoid the escalation of direct US military involvement in Vietnam and by extension, South-east Asia. It was best had the fighting been left to the South Vietnamese with funding and advisers provided by the US. And seriously avoid MLK and Malcolm X's assassinations as well as RFK's or at least have them survive. Most of the unrest in the late 60s would had been averted or lessened.

[ArmchairPhilosopher]

It would probably require a US with an official state religion a la most European nations, which requires a PoD long before 1900.

America had too much religious diversity (at least in intra-Christian terms) for there to be a scenario where one large church to which most of the faithful belonged became discredited. The only way I can really see that being possible is if all pilgrims/settlers/colonists/migrants all came from either one European nation or several European nations with the same religion, and none or very few of them represented religious dissidents/refugees.

Under either scenario, America as we know it is likely butterflied away utterly.

[Sam]

You're all missing the point. Contemporary American religiosity is largely due to people using their beliefs as a kind of supernatural insurance, to compensate for America's weaker social safety nets. That weakness is largely due to America's racial divisions, as filtered through the American political system. I don't see either those divisions or that system being much improved with a post-1900 POD, so twentieth-century American religiosity is, in all probability, nearly inevitable.

[ArmchairPhilosopher]

When Europe started going secular in the mid-1700s, there were no welfare systems in place.

What happened was more and more people were growing cynical at a single, all-powerful state religion (be it Catholicism, Anglicanism, or whatever). America wasn't even a nation yet at that time and it was a motley mix of Catholics, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Lutherans, Quakers, Jews, and many others. There was no "man" to rally against.

[Mr Qwerty]

Originally Posted by Sam

You're all missing the point. Contemporary American religiosity is largely due to people using their beliefs as a kind of supernatural insurance, to compensate for America's weaker social safety nets. That weakness is largely due to America's racial divisions, as filtered through the American political system. I don't see either those divisions or that system being much improved with a post-1900 POD, so twentieth-century American religiosity is, in all probability, nearly inevitable.

Interesting viewpoint. Some might bring up the fact that, currently, the most religious are allied with those who are dismantling what safety nets we have. This is irrelevant, since American religiosity is much older than the late 70's. I believe, however, that you are incorrect. European secularism results from the 19th century reaction against the state churches which controlled huge fractions of each state's wealth. The European social safety nets had not yet been built. In fact, what safety nets the US had before the Great Depression were religious.

A single US state church requires a POD so far back the US as we know it cannot exist. But I think it might be possible for each state to have its own church (as some did before the Constitution).

[Apollo 20]

Originally Posted by Sam

You're all missing the point. Contemporary American religiosity is largely due to people using their beliefs as a kind of supernatural insurance, to compensate for America's weaker social safety nets. That weakness is largely due to America's racial divisions, as filtered through the American political system. I don't see either those divisions or that system being much improved with a post-1900 POD, so twentieth-century American religiosity is, in all probability, nearly inevitable.

That's an interesting thesis, and I think you are on to something with it, but the fact of the matter is that today's religiosity is a different animal than that which existed prior to the 1970s/1980s. What is considered mainstream charismatic/evangelical in today's America was well outside the norm throughout much of the century. The rise in evangelical/charismatic beliefs is concurrent with a decline in mainstream denominations (i.e. Episcopal (Anglican), Presbyterian, Methodist, etc.). By way of example, Jimmy Carter, running as a "born-again" Christian in 1976 was considered somewhat outside the mainstream at the time; now, such beliefs are nearly de rigeur for Republican candidates.

Personally, I think the best bet for less religiosity is a less messy 1960s. No Vietnam, fewer assassinations and a tamer counterculture would, I think, ameliorate a lot of the social conditions and backlash that led people to turn to religion beginning in the 1970s.

[Sam]

Originally Posted by ArmchairPhilosopher

When Europe started going secular in the mid-1700s, there were no welfare systems in place.

What happened was more and more people were growing cynical at a single, all-powerful state religion (be it Catholicism, Anglicanism, or whatever). America wasn't even a nation yet at that time and it was a motley mix of Catholics, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Lutherans, Quakers, Jews, and many others. There was no "man" to rally against.

You simply cannot trace the religious environment of contemporay nations back to the Eighteenth century. The role of religion has changed completely since then, and every nation has seen its religiosity shift over time - sometimes dramatically.

Your argument in specific holds no water. There is no correlation today between the presence of a dominant church and a lack of religion. Meanwhile, America only started to diverge from European levels of religiosity when Civil Rights became an issue. Which is indicative, at least.

[ArmchairPhilosopher]

Sam,

Look at what the nations that have any kind of a thriving or growing Christian presence today have in common--be they the United States, China (with its huge house-church movement that far eclipses the official state line on religion), South Korea, some of the sub-Saharan African nations, etc. All are nations that never had a powerful state church that homogenized religious life.

Now look at all of the post-Christian nations today--England, Germany, Russia, the Scandinavian countries, etc. What do they all have in common?

[Joseph Solis in Australia]

Almost sounds ASB, America in general are more religious than Europe. America never experience an anti-clergical revolution. America's famous motto emphasizes religiosity, "In God we Trust".

[ChucK Y]

POD: Lyman Stewart dies in 1900, and so does not publish The Fundamentals or provide philanthropic support for the nascent fundamentalist movement. This movement is thus weaker and more disorganized throughout the century, and more marginalized. The more liberal wing of the various denominations is relatively more influential. The more secularized churches have less interest in proselytizing the unchurched, and the nonreligious portion of the population grows in relative numbers to become a majority of the population by the end of the century.

[Twin City Lines]

Originally Posted by Mr Qwerty

Interesting viewpoint. Some might bring up the fact that, currently, the most religious are allied with those who are dismantling what safety nets we have. This is irrelevant, since American religiosity is much older than the late 70's. I believe, however, that you are incorrect. European secularism results from the 19th century reaction against the state churches which controlled huge fractions of each state's wealth. The European social safety nets had not yet been built. In fact, what safety nets the US had before the Great Depression were religious.

A single US state church requires a POD so far back the US as we know it cannot exist. But I think it might be possible for each state to have its own church (as some did before the Constitution).

IIRC some states had state churches as late as 1837. Until the 14th Amendment, the Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government.

[Wendell]

Originally Posted by JoeMulk

Avoid Reagen's election by having a Republican president in the late 70s, preferably someone like Rocky who basically shows the religious right the door. So this could fit into a world where Ford is assasinated. Then a liberal Democrat, either Kennedy or Mondale gets elected in 80 and AIDS is somehow butterflied out of existence. In 84 a conservative Republican loses in a landslide and after that the GOP is forced to permanently run to the center.

The OP said no ASBs

[Wendell]

Originally Posted by Joseph Solis in Australia

Almost sounds ASB, America in general are more religious than Europe. America never experience an anti-clergical revolution. America's famous motto emphasizes religiosity, "In God we Trust".

A motto that has only been official since the Eisenhower years. I've always preferred E Pluribus Unum myself.

[Twin City Lines]

Fear of nuclear war also drove a lot of people to religion in the early 1980s. Fundamentalist Christians were *really* heavy on thinking the world was going to end in the next 10 years. The TV news had something almost every day about bad US-Soviet relations, making fears of an Apocolypse quite believable to normal, everyday people.

[Wendell]

Originally Posted by Twin City Lines

Fear of nuclear war also drove a lot of people to religion in the early 1980s. Fundamentalist Christians were *really* heavy on thinking the world was going to end in the next 10 years. The TV news had something almost every day about bad US-Soviet relations, making fears of an Apocolypse quite believable to normal, everyday people.

So, have Nixon's election in 1960 nutterfly away the Cuban Missile Crisis and that could reduce American fears of being nuked into oblivion during the cold war.