The book, "shall the religious inherit the world" is relevant.
I'd be interested what happens when general birthrate declines and a religious group, that massively encourages tons of children, take larger voting percentages.
I'd be interested what happens when general birthrate declines and a religious group, that massively encourages tons of children, take larger voting percentages.
The interesting thing about these groups is that they exhibit “carrying limits”: they get to particular community sizes and begin to experience attrition through secularization.
Haredim “get away” with minimizing participation in many ways, which makes their attrition rates lower than comparable religious groups. But that doesn’t last forever; compare the secularization of Jews in Austro-Hungary in the late 19th century.
But that was implied by discussing a carrying _limit_ right?
I feel like this is true for religious groups in christian-majority countries (or at least traditionally christian countries). I believe that secularization is a christian phenomenon (yes I know it sounds counter-productive), and as such it can only exist in countries with a strong christian tradition.
And this belief/concern presupposes that in democratic societies the political power is held by voters, which I feel is highly reductive even for the most effective democracies
I'm counting back though prime ministers and i can't recall one who made religion a major part of their platform in my lifetime.
Hasn’t the growth of Islam in Europe been a large and growing political issue for the past decade?
France in particular has had lot of debates about religious clothing at schools, what kind of criticism of religious ideas is and isn’t acceptable, etc.
From my POV, it looks like religion is a bigger deal in European than American politics. In America, politics are the religion for many and marrying across political lines now carries more opposition than across religious ones, for the majority of people. Things have changed quite a bit since the 80s.
Probably more like two decades by now :-) The political parties in Europe that pride themselves on anti-Islamism are themselves not religious all. And no one (of any significance) in Western Europe is arguing for a return to Christianity. Some parties advocate “Judeo-Christian values” but the various incarnations of this concept are nebulous at best and mostly completely unrecognizable to Jews and Christians.
At the same time, many Western European countries are now majority atheist or at least majority unaffiliated with organized religion, so, no, religion is not at all a bigger deal in European politics at all.
This is apparent if you come from a different religious background. I know people who are nominally atheist but you can tell their family is German Protestant a mile away.
France has had a strong separation between the state and religion for a century. It’s one of the less religious country in the world and a significant part of the population is still strongly against any kind of religion especially the Catholic Church.
As I wrote: "a significant part of the population is still strongly against any kind of religion".
All religious signs are banned in schools not only the hijab. France views religion as strictly a private matter which has no place at all in the public sphere. That’s not a religious conflict just widely incompatible with the American view on the subjects.
But even then, as a French, I would applaud anything going against religions. The faster we get ride of obscurantism the better the world.
Most people would call that a culture.
One were most people do not go to church on Sunday and politicians, even if they’re from a religious background, like Angela Merkel, don’t ever talk about God.
And one that is very different from the one across the Atlantic where “in God we trust” is the national motto and politicians make sure to fluff up their religious credentials.
Sure. But in Europe that culture co-evolved with more than a 1,000 years of Christianity being central to society. The cultural inheritance of Christianity survives whether people go to church or not. The same is true for those Muslim immigrants. They are culturally Muslim. It’s those differences in culture, rooted in religion, that are the source of the conflict, not theology in the abstract.
> One were most people do not go to church on Sunday and politicians, even if they’re from a religious background, like Angela Merkel, don’t ever talk about God.
The German system of offering education in Christianity in public schools would be illegal in America. In Germany abortion is still technically illegal, and is restricted after 12 weeks, whereas in most of America it’s available up to 24 weeks. In Bavaria the government can require Christian crosses to be displayed in all public buildings. In America that would be illegal.
So why doesn’t Merkel talk about Christianity? Is it because Christianity has less influence on government and society in Germany? Or is it because Germany secularism carved out a sphere for Christianity in society, and, unlike in America, nobody is trying to eliminate that sphere?
What is your point about this? The motto has a long tradition almost as old as the country and it's really not uncommon for European countries to reference God in their national or even unofficial national motto.
> politicians make sure to fluff up their religious credentials.
Like who and how? Most politicians don't do this. Politicians in the US are generally not very religious in my opinion. Ironically, the ones I can think of that are most outspoken about their religion are two Catholics who are at odds with their church leadership over abortion and gay marriage, and Muslims who I somewhat doubt practice Islam. I am struggling to even think of more overtly religious politicians. I just think media reports skew how irreligious politics in the US actually is. I am sure you can find some story about a speech somewhere reference religion or a cross being put up on a state courthouse or something somewhere but I don't think exceptions make the rule and this forgets that even just taking the federal government alone, there are hundreds of politicians who never bring up religion and things are actually much more mundane.
If you look, you can definitely religious people but it's not most people or even close. The one large exception to this is the large number of immigrants who were much more likely to be religious and church-going.
Where can I learn more about this? I find it difficult to believe this is true for "the majority of people".
- https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/02/interfaith-...
- https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/06/22/3-partisan-e...
This trend started with William Branham (progenitor of Latter Rain cult, The Message cult, prosperity gospel, healing-campaign revivalism ... leading to the current New Apostolic Reformation) and his mentor Roy E. Davis (Klan leader) in the 1930s. They started a political white supremacist cult with a religious bent. These two spawned a plethora of "heretical" movements still going strong today, a fusion of supremacist, new age ideas from the late 1800s, anti-communist, and evangelical/pentecostal ideas.
(Refer to the "Leaving The Message" YouTube channel. These guys, Branham and Davis, spawned the hydra.)
Edit: clarity, additional points
Much of the get-out-the-vote effort on the right consists of reminding their voters why they hate the other side. This naturally pisses off the left. This leads to much angry rhetoric on the left. This rhetoric is nut-picked and put on blast by the media on the right. Etc. The situation isn't symmetric because the left has a lot of issues they're happy to run on: climate change, electoral reforms, education, health care. The right is mostly focused on their hatred of the left -- anti-wokeism, anti-CRT, anti-gender-whatever. The net effect is a lot of hatred.
In France, Muslim immigration has made religion a major campaign issue. The French frame it as a matter of secularism versus Islam, but French secularism is better described as a form of Enlightenment-flavored post-Catholicism: https://www.europenowjournal.org/2019/10/02/the-catholic-nes...
But a major policy decision directly targeting religion? The closest I can think of in the US is Trump banning immigration from majority-Muslim countries under the pretext of links to terror.
As for the rest of the Western world, you might think of Angela Merkel and Ursula von der Leyen, who explicitly represent the Christian Democratic Union.
That said I'd argue the culture war is quasi-religious, and it's being fought equally across the Anglosphere and beyond.
It seems to me like the reason Germany doesn’t have a religiously charged debate on abortion is that no major party is pushing for abortion to 24 weeks or even later like in America.
It doesn't seem unreasonable that other people would have a lower comfort limit, again even without religion.
If you want to see what atheists do when they’re not bound by the cultural hangover of an abrahamic religion, look at population control efforts in Asia. The Chinese correctly observed that, from a purely utilitarian standpoint, there’s no compelling reason to draw the line at birth.
Except there is. You want the same protections applied to you, even if you're unconscious or otherwise unable to protest. Pretty much the only broadly supportable position is that killing a viable person is murder and no more or less supportable than them killing you.
Personally I find his view to be utterly morally abhorrent, but I have to credit him with the courage and consistency of taking utilitarianism to its logical conclusion.
Me. That's why I want to find a simple set of rules that we can both agree to, where you care about me in trade for similar concern and protection.
> If a stroke reduces you to the same level of mental functioning as a newborn
Right, I don't consider that viable without some sort of prognosis of recovery but if we go too far down the line of 'burden to society' it starts to include people who drive too slowly in the passing lane and gets more subjective.
That would be considered OOT for a priest over here.
Only in the Churches where the religion part is seen with faint embarrassment. Established Churches are the best way to drive religiosity down yet discovered besides banning.
The Trump travel ban is weird in its various iterations. On one hand Trump was on the record during his campaign as wanting to ban Muslims from entering the country entirely, but on the other hand the ban completely omitted the largest predominantly-Muslim countries (Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh). For a sense of scale, those three countries make up about a third of the world's Muslim population. (Add on India and Nigeria and you're looking at half of the global Muslim population.) There was also criticism for omitting places like Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Lebanon (and Egypt, in earlier iterations) which actually had demonstrable ties to 9/11.
But, the original list was mostly consistent with restrictions on the visa waiver program, which is to say the administration probably wanted to start small with the most legally defensible subset before expanding it more broadly. In practice, said restrictions were uniformly blocked by the judicial system.
Ostensibly the first amendment's establishment cause prevents Congress from passing laws that are overly religious, although that doesn't entirely stop them from, say, passing the Defense of Marriage Act or attempting to explicitly opt out churches from COVID restrictions.
These days it's mostly about putting ideologically-aligned judges on the courts and letting them choose which laws to block or precedent to overturn.
No, it does not. The first amendment establishes freedom of religion, and prohibits state-sponsored religion. (The phrase "separation of church and state" is found nowhere in the Constitution.) As the Constitution was originally interpreted, it only applied to the federal government; individual US states had state-sponsored churches into the 19th century.
>or attempting to explicitly opt out churches from COVID restrictions.
This is based on the first amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion. This is why churches, for example, don't pay taxes.
In any case, this is immaterial to the Trump immigration bans. The US president has enormous latitude over who is admitted into the country. <https://np.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/4vv1rc/utmwnn_explai...>
If not, I’d be interested if you look at birthrate by religion in France (and please add stats of bullying at school if you find them) and see whether it fits your expected model.
Doesn't seem to be more religious though.
As a country we were over 50% secular 30 years ago, the last census tells over 90% declared to be religious (census is wrong, but how wrong?).
https://www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/politics/chur...
Edit: capitalization