less religious US Working Class how?

What is often shown here in Europe is that the majority of the Working Class in America vote Republican and are bibletumbers.... Thereby making the bibletumpers less dominant in US Politics?

The first thing I thought Euroman was talking about when he mentioned "Republican... biblethumpers" was the proclivity for the greater majority of working class individuals in the USA to be pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and perhaps attend nondenominational "megachurches" in greater proportion to their total population in comparison to the middle and upper classes. One of Obama's less tactful remarks last year, we all remember, was on this topic. Working class people also frequently (especially in the 1990s and early 2000s) seem to support Republican conservative/neoconservative pro-business anti-working-class notions that are not actually in their best interests, which is likely perplexing to some Europeans.
 
From what I've read the US generally has high attendances at mainstream churches and these mainstream churches run a sort of ad-hoc welfare system for their worse-off parishiners. So if the state ran a comprehensive welfare system like that in Europe and elsehwere (here) people wouldn't need to turn to prayer and charity to have their needs/wants met.

It seems to me you have some things backward. In the US, it is the "mainstream" protestant churches (lutheran, methodist, anglican, methodist, etc) with relatively poor attendance. It's the non-denomination fundamentalists churches with thousands and thousands of active members. However, you have one thing right. The US does have a huge ad hoc welfare system. Most americans see voluntary associations (churches, social clubs, cause-focused groups, etc) as their main avenue to provide assistance to people and programs. Rightly or wrongly, there is a common perception that giving to one's church's outreach programs, the Salvation Army, the Rotary Club, or the United Way provides better and more efficient assistance to "the needy" than government welfare plans - hence the high rate of private giving in the US and explicit governmental support for "faith based" charities in the welfare policies of both the Bush and Obama administrations.
 
Nonsense. What's not a big part of working class Europeans is church attendance, something that the sneering chattering classes routinely conflate with religious beliefs in order to impugn the United States. Let me direct you to this essay which addresses the topic rather succinctly.

Bill

Well if 42.7% in my country considers themselves not to be religiously affiliated, I guess there must SOME truth in what Euroman says.
Northern European workers didn't attend church before 1945, either. I fact, the proletariat have never been very religious. They were busy feeding themselves, feeding a priest too wasn't a priority.

I would like to counter that as well. My ancestors where very well part of the lower working class and I can assure you they were religious. Of course going to church daily may become difficult if you have to get up at before sunset walk for a few hours before you arrive at the work place, work for an entire day and then head back.
But then again, this is on a religious border and before the 2nd world war Catholics still were ruled by the Protestant minority.

Volks
 
Well if 42.7% in my country considers themselves not to be religiously affiliated, I guess there must SOME truth in what Euroman says.



Volks,

Did you bother to read the article? The study it quotes pointed out that religious beliefs had little to do with church attendance or professed religious affiliation. 42.7% of your nation may not be religiously affiliated but that doesn't mean they're agnostics.

Church attendance is high in the US because the US has had what is essentially a "free market" for religion for centuries. Churches compete with each other for worshippers and that keeps attendance relatively high.

A similar competition among priests in classical Alexandria kept Heron busy designing toys, gimmicks, and geegaws to lure in the "faithful".


Bill
 
Volks,

Did you bother to read the article? The study it quotes pointed out that religious beliefs had little to do with church attendance or professed religious affiliation. 42.7% of your nation may not be religiously affiliated but that doesn't mean they're agnostics.

Church attendance is high in the US because the US has had what is essentially a "free market" for religion for centuries. Churches compete with each other for worshippers and that keeps attendance relatively high.

A similar competition among priests in classical Alexandria kept Heron busy designing toys, gimmicks, and geegaws to lure in the "faithful".


Bill

Well I did bother myself to read the quote, otherwise your efforts to quote the article would have been in vain ;)

I must admit, you are right Non-Affiliated does not have to mean they are agnostic, but then again neither does the percentage of affiliated people mean that is they are religious.
People are often added to a church by birth by their parents. They remain registered unless asked to unregistered and as their is no monthly/yearly fee, people tend not to unregister.
A few years ago people received a letter from the church asking for the people who no longer feel affiliated to the church to unregister. I myself am still part of the Catholic Church as well.

A quote from Wiki
Fewer than 20% visit church regularly..... the fact that in the age group under 35, 69% are non-affiliated. However, those who are religious tend to be more profoundly religious. Religious belief is also regarded as a very personal affair, as is illustrated by the fact that 60% of self-described believers are not affiliated with any organised religion.......One quarter of non-believers sometimes pray, but more in a sense of meditative self-reflection.
It seams the the real question we are dealing with is: When are you not religious?
Because as no one knows for sure there is no God, most people will always have doubts.

I am reading the entire article now and I now do see your point though.
 
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The first thing I thought Euroman was talking about when he mentioned "Republican... biblethumpers" was the proclivity for the greater majority of working class individuals in the USA to be pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and perhaps attend nondenominational "megachurches" in greater proportion to their total population in comparison to the middle and upper classes. One of Obama's less tactful remarks last year, we all remember, was on this topic. Working class people also frequently (especially in the 1990s and early 2000s) seem to support Republican conservative/neoconservative pro-business anti-working-class notions that are not actually in their best interests, which is likely perplexing to some Europeans.

If one had a timemachine how does one chance that? I mean how can you get the US working class to reject the above?
 
The "proletariat"? Who uses that word seriously anymore? And about "Northern Europeon workers." What were they doing instead...defending their homes and wives from pillage by the rampaging chronies of "oligarchs" that happen to look like the Monopoly man?

What were they doing instead? Feeding their children. You do realize that well into 20th century the ordinary factory worker could count himself lucky if he and his family could go to bed with filled stomachs? Semi-starvation was a constant phenomenon.

I think the reason religiosity was so weak was that lutheranism (quite ironically, considering it's precepts) was very extroverted. On the country-side being a Christian meant going to church etc, and God was probable more accepted as a fact (like gravity) rather then in the fervent way a pentecostal worships, by most people. So when country-people, like my gand-parents who were all born on small-farms, were proletarized and moved to the city they left the old country-side social structure in which the state church had been very important behind them, and when they left that social structure their very extroverted religion also tended to disappear since it was more behaviour then belief. That's why people like my grand-parents are generally totally a-religious. And that's why religion totally died when it lost its place in the social structure.

You might believe it or not, but in my country at least workers and related groups were never very religious. Ivar Lo-Johansson, for example, describes in his memoirs his up-bringing on a large noble-estate were the work was done by share-croppers and statare (the later employed on one-year basis, living men, women and children together in crowded, disease-ridden barracks). A minority among these were so-called readers, that is people who read and practised the bible, but they were regarded as almost pariah by the others, who wanted nothing to do with these strange people. And as for the priests, they were seen as just another burden, demanding their a of the poors already meagre living.

And why that would be controversial, I don't know. The political songs of the workers movement are full of anti-clerical references, which would be pretty unlikely if the people that made up the movement were in fact die-hard Christian-
 
What were they doing instead? Feeding their children. You do realize that well into 20th century the ordinary factory worker could count himself lucky if he and his family could go to bed with filled stomachs? Semi-starvation was a constant phenomenon.

You might believe it or not, but in my country at least workers and related groups were never very religious. Ivar Lo-Johansson, for example, describes in his memoirs his up-bringing on a large noble-estate were the work was done by share-croppers and statare (the later employed on one-year basis, living men, women and children together in crowded, disease-ridden barracks). A minority among these were so-called readers, that is people who read and practised the bible, but they were regarded as almost pariah by the others, who wanted nothing to do with these strange people. And as for the priests, they were seen as just another burden, demanding their a of the poors already meagre living.

And why that would be controversial, I don't know. The political songs of the workers movement are full of anti-clerical references, which would be pretty unlikely if the people that made up the movement were in fact die-hard Christian-

Peter, did your country have (or, does it have) a mandatory tithe or church tax? I could see taxation perpetually alienating the "proletariat" or people living in a sort of feudal system as you describe. I wonder if this is what you mean when you say that the people could not feed themselves and the priest at the same time? In post-Reformation England (and possibly pre-Reformation England as well) it was not uncommon for rectors or bishops to be absent from their parishes, leaving all the work to the underpaid vicar but still taking their cut of the tithes.

Church attendance is high in the US because the US has had what is essentially a "free market" for religion for centuries. Churches compete with each other for worshippers and that keeps attendance relatively high.

Bill's right -- the free market model works. I'd add that part of the success of the US model is the "separation of church and state" (who knows what that means anymore, but whatever.) Anyway, this (quasi-)constitutional tenet stipulates that the practice of religion is fully divorced from the state. This includes any coersion or taxation. This tenet also removes any obligation to participate in services. If I were a citizen of a nation that taxed citizens according to nominal religious affiliation (such as Germany), I would support disestablishment of state-funded churches. I know the the Church of Sweden recently disestablished, for example. I wonder if any of the Swedes in here could comment on the impact of disestablishment on personal faith and finances. I have a feeling that the Church of England will disestablish soon, probably under Charles, but that's OT/possibly ASB.

The study it quotes pointed out that religious beliefs had little to do with church attendance or professed religious affiliation. 42.7% of your nation may not be religiously affiliated but that doesn't mean they're agnostics.

Perhaps, the large number of purportedly agnostic persons in Europe have merely removed themselves from the taxation rolls of a state-recognized or controlled church. As Bill notes, this does not necessarily imply that these people are strictly agnostic. These people might still maintain personal devotions even though they're not handing over a fraction of their dough to a religious body. How will these patterns of agnosticism change with disestablishment of state run or funded churches? That would be interesting to watch.
 
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