? how do you explain the relative stability of largely secular nations then?
If one wants to play "edgy contrarian" and argue that the United States was somehow worse than either of those, well...the U.S. is technically secular too.
In reality communism was a religion and more precisely a variant of the Christian religion, but this fact was disguised by changing the names of all things related to the Christian religion.
Just a few of the correspondences between Christianity and Communism (shown as traditional word => communist word for the same concept):
Christian => atheist
Pagan => Christian
Prophets => Marx, Engels & Lenin
Holy Scriptures => the published works of Marx, Engels & Lenin
Christian martyrs => communist illegalists
Pope => general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Cardinals/patriarchs => general secretaries of communist parties
Priests => members of the communist parties having functions in the party hierarchy
Religious teaching in schools => Political teaching in schools
Priest of a military unit => Political second-in-command of a military unit
Heretics => oppositionists to the party leadership
Happy life in the afterlife => happy life in the future truly communist society
Holy Inquisition => Committee for State Security
... and so on.
Writing a complete dictionary about all the words used by Christianity with their replacements in Communism would take a very long time.
While the communist vocabulary looks very different, the meanings are exactly the same as in Christianity.
All the communist countries were not countries free of religion, but on the contrary, they were countries were a monotheistic-like religion was intermingled with all the administrative & government institutions and where all the other religions were aggressively persecuted, including the true atheists or agnostics (i.e. not the communist atheists, which was the code name for the believers in the communist religion).
The claim that the communist countries were not religious was just propaganda, they were countries where there was no separation between the religion and the state.
Likewise false was the claim that the communist countries had a different economic system, in reality their economic system was an extreme form of capitalism, where everything was dominated by monopolies.
However, the Soviets actively rooted every religion during their rule, especially Orthodox Christianity. So if we are to consider Soviet communism a form of Christianity, it's unclear how useful this actually is.
Yes the communists persecuted the other religions, inclusive by imprisoning and/or killing many Catholic priests and many Orthodox priests.
However, this is exactly what was previously done by some kinds of Christians against other kinds of Christians, e.g. during the many conflicts between Protestants and Catholics and between Catholics and Orthodox Christians.
Some people downvoted me, but this also just validates my affirmation that most Westerners are not aware of these facts and they do not understand Communism.
I have grown in a country occupied by communists, so I know from direct experience how Communism works, not from the fantastic depictions typical for the Western movies or novels.
When I was in school, there was nothing that I hated more than the mandatory classes of communist religion, the so-called Political teachings.
Also, due to the stupidity of one of my colleagues, a teacher discovered that I had a Bible and, because of that, I was almost expelled from High School a short time before the final exam, but I was very lucky due to some special circumstances and I could avoid the expulsion.
Many years later, after communism failed, I believed that the new generations of students will escape my fate and they will no longer waste time with the mandatory religion classes.
Unfortunately, my hope was wrong, because the mandatory Political teachings classes were not deleted from the curriculum, but they were replaced by mandatory Christian religion classes.
So nothing has changed, when the Communist religion was mandatory, I had almost lost my career because it was supposed that I might be Christian, but if I were a student today, I would have similar problems if I would attempt to criticize in school the Christian religion, for exactly the same reasons that were applicable to Communism.
Communism, Christianity, and also the other monotheist religions, are extremely intolerant against the believers of any other religion.
Secularism is the opposite, at most you could say that secularism is like many polytheistic religions, where it was considered normal that everyone believes in their own gods and for the other people it does not matter which are those gods.
The life of a normal citizen of a communist country was very similar, for example, to the life in Italy or Spain 600 years ago, when the Church was more powerful. It might have actually been worse, because the Communist Party might have been more powerful than the Catholic Church ever was.
Permanently you had to be very careful with everything you said, because if you ever contradicted some dogma written in the Holy Communist Scriptures or some interpretation given by a High Communist Priest, you could be singled out as an heretic and be excommunicated, with very bad consequences.
Regarding the Communist dogmas, everything was based on "have faith and do not doubt". It was absolutely impossible to have any discussion about communism based on rational arguments or on experiment results.
Like Christianity, Communism blocked any kind of scientific research that could contradict in any way its Holy Scriptures. To make progress in any career, you had to either be or simulate that you are a true believer and you had to display frequently your faith in the Communist religion.
It does not matter what words are used by Christianity or Communism, wherever any of them succeeded to control the state institutions, the consequences were the same for the citizens, no freedom of speech and severe discrimination between believers and non-believers.
Secularism was precisely the reaction against this, having the purpose of allowing the freedom of speech and religion.
The US is becoming openly hostile to religion, as many of the comments in this thread evidence, which is distinct from neutrality. I agree with religious freedom as such, with everyone being on equal standing.
If you define secularism as the USSR or China, I would disagree with their long term stability, or even with liking their regimes.
Could it be that in Sweden, you get some sort of tax rebate or discounts at supermarkets if you are officially registered with some religion?
Their crime and imprisonment rates are far below those of the US. Even on an individual level, the presence of non-religious individuals is assocated with a series of positive societal effects: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227616923_Atheism_S...
Religion isn't necessary for public morality, and as America has shown, is often actively harmful. America is full of people who assume that they are good people BECAUSE they go to church rather than because of their acts. By and large, these are generally not good people. Instead, they're among the most judgmental and least helpful members of society.
To paraphrase Gandhi, "I like your Christ, not your Christians". The religious in modern society can't even be bothered to read the Cliff Notes of their own book, otherwise they'd be focused on helping the poor and remembering that rich people have trouble getting to heaven rather than going around promoting guns, no taxes, and slashing social safety nets.
On tax, Jesus was giving that response to an entraping question from Pharisees they asked because He had in past criticised of harsh tax policy. Force tithing is not a thing of New Testament but old.
Matthew 5:38 — He advises his followers not to retaliate when attacked. He does not tell them to go out and disarm anyone else, or petition the Roman government to hypocritically do so on their behalf.
Mark 12:17 — When the Pharisees attempted to entrap Him with a question when could not be answered either "yes" or "no" without enraging either the Romans or the religious leaders, He evades the original question and turns it into an admonition to give people (and God) what they are due. Note that he never actual said that the coin was owed to Caesar, though many people seem to assume so. He only asked whose face was on the coin. The idea that not just the tax being demanded but all coins actually belonged to Caesar just because his face was stamped on them would rightly have been considered ludicrous. And no matter how you take that conversation, the fact remains that he never made any comment on the merit of the taxes themselves. There aren't any statements in support of the practice of taxation, and all the points about providing for others, supporting the poor, etc. involve personal contributions, not political action.
I don't think the US is becoming openly hostile to religion.
It is becoming hostile to religion in the public sphere, a good thing if there ever was one.
Just like your sexual practices, keep your religion at home and please stop bothering other people with it.