AHC: More religious 21st Century West

Your challenge: With a PoD of 1918, Have the peoples of western (Europe and North America) countries noticeably more religiously observant than the people OT 21st century. By "more religiously observant" I don't mean people under a theocracy, but observance as much greater than 'something grandma does on Sundays'. i.e. people don't live their lives around religion, but at the same time, your typical bloke takes it seriously.
 

JJohnson

Banned
Something more than people going on only Easter and Christmas, I take it.

Closer to people who actually read the Bible or Torah, and actively try to apply its teachings to their daily lives, and discuss it openly without fear of being removed from school or work, and praying openly without fear of being sued, correct?
 
Make America Communist. Make thei Communist America suck. Make America un-Communist by way of people gathering in the few remaining churches and whatnot. Revolution happens. People see religiousness as regaining their lost culture and re-convert.
 
The Vatican decides to act the Martyr during the war. Pope Pius issues Papal Bulls revealing in plain terms the full extent of Nazi atrocities. He's arrested. The Papal Conclave flees to Portugal.

Across Nazi-occupied Europe, Catholics are rounded up. Many bishops are tortured and killed. Every day, Allied propaganda carries stories of heroic martyrdom by Catholics, and increasingly, dissident Protestants, across Europe. The Pope himself is kept incommunicado in a bunker in Austria.

After the war, the Papal Conclave returns to Rome and sets out rebuilding the church's infrastructure. And with the Cold War looming, the CIA and western intelligence agencies believe the church (Catholic and Protestant) is the only organization in Europe who can match the communists in social prestige. Church clergy enjoy as much social status as war veterans, and any respectable person at least pretends to be in church on Sunday morning.
 
Preventing the world wars from happening in a recognizable manner could butterfly away Communism from Eastern Europe. That prevents state imposed atheism.
 
Preventing the world wars from happening in a recognizable manner could butterfly away Communism from Eastern Europe. That prevents state imposed atheism.
But that has led to a religious backlash in the 21st century in much of Eastern Europe. Removing this would therefore defeat the OP (see LeoXiao's above post).
 
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The Vatican decides to act the Martyr during the war. Pope Pius issues Papal Bulls revealing in plain terms the full extent of Nazi atrocities. He's arrested. The Papal Conclave flees to Portugal.

Across Nazi-occupied Europe, Catholics are rounded up. Many bishops are tortured and killed. Every day, Allied propaganda carries stories of heroic martyrdom by Catholics, and increasingly, dissident Protestants, across Europe. The Pope himself is kept incommunicado in a bunker in Austria.

After the war, the Papal Conclave returns to Rome and sets out rebuilding the church's infrastructure. And with the Cold War looming, the CIA and western intelligence agencies believe the church (Catholic and Protestant) is the only organization in Europe who can match the communists in social prestige. Church clergy enjoy as much social status as war veterans, and any respectable person at least pretends to be in church on Sunday morning.

I like it.

THis leads to the denial of Freedom of Religion in the Warsaw Pact get a lot more attention.
 
Your challenge: With a PoD of 1918, Have the peoples of western (Europe and North America) countries noticeably more religiously observant than the people OT 21st century. By "more religiously observant" I don't mean people under a theocracy, but observance as much greater than 'something grandma does on Sundays'. i.e. people don't live their lives around religion, but at the same time, your typical bloke takes it seriously.

If you take Mary Eberstadt's thesis seriously, you need larger family sizes and larger rates of family formation to accomplish this. Maybe something like butterflying WWII (because of the social changes it wrought, including moving women into the work force) while at the same time having a plague or something reduce population so that the percieved cost of family formation is still low.

Getting rid of the Pill would help, but I think that's mostly impossible.

Somehow getting rid of social security type schemes or explicitly tying them to the number of children held would also help some.
 
The solution is to have less state churches in Europe. State churches led to backlashes. Look at America, much more religious than Europe, and without a state church.
 
The solution is to have less state churches in Europe. State churches led to backlashes. Look at America, much more religious than Europe, and without a state church.

I don't think it's that simple. In many parts of Europe, the Catholic Church has been the de facto state church for centuries, and retains its influence in many countries. The church has simply been too wealthy and influential for kings to ignore, so no state churches is ASB. In any case, the younger generation in the US is as secular as their European cousins.

Somehow, the church must be perceived even by those who care less about the immaculate conception, the resurrection, etc as some moral force.

Communism may or may not help. In Poland, the church was strengthened as a backlash against Soviet domination. In East Germany, reunification has only accelerated the decline of the church.
 
Probaly butterfly WWI has that created a mood for people and future generation to question authority and by extension religion
 
I like it.

THis leads to the denial of Freedom of Religion in the Warsaw Pact get a lot more attention.

If that happened, the Soviets will try very hard to co-opt the church for its own goals. Their propaganda will highlight how Jesus and the Gospel are socialist. They'll compare capitalist to the money changers in the temple. Party apparatchiks make speeches stating the Five Year Plan is a step towards building a socialist Jerusalem, etc.

They'll allow the church some influence under the tight control of its intelligence agencies (e.g. the church tacitly allows the KGB to vet its leadership, etc). In theory, Marxist doctrine is atheist, but I'm sure Stalin and Khrushchev can ignore it just as China's leaders have ignore Marxism.
 
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