What made the USA so religious?

Wasn't it basically founded by religious loons who thought Europe was 2sinful4them?

Puritans and the Geneva Bible.

>>672746

Also think about the psychological effects of having to build your own shitty church and run it while living on the plains virtually alone and surrounded by savages

Fuck the juhovas witness

The fact that our was founded on religious precursors and the 2 great revivals of the 1800s

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1. Puritan settlers

2. The "Great Awakenings"

3. The religious revivalism of the mid 20th century.

/thread

The people who moved to the US abandoned their national identity so their religion filled that niche while in Europe people identified more with their nationality.

Now that nationalism is losing ground in Europe it's been getting replaced with new religions such as the green movement and other hippie cults at least to some extend. Once the United States of Europe project advances I'm sure you'll see even more this kind of stuff happening. It's no coincidence that Christian fundamentalism is essentially an American approach.

In fact Christianity in the US is a lot different than in Europe. It's more of a reactionary movement whereas here the reactionaries are usually nationalists and not really that religious while the religious people are a bunch of liberal hippies. At least up north. It's probably a bit different down south and the east.

>>672744
The Cold War

>>672824
It was already the case in the 19th century.

>>672744

Actually, the correct question is: what made Europeans so secular.

>>672841
No it isn't

>>672841
inb4 jews

>>672780
This

Does it have to do with how in Europe you only had Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and a handful of Protestant groups being encouraged whereas in America everyone was basically given free range?

>>672870
Perhaps in part. Definitely helped the 1st great awakening

>>672841
World War I and II destroyed any power the churches had over the populace.

People kept on leaving as church did little to alleviate the troubles they faced due to famine, war etc. With the taboo of apostasy being removed, people simply didn't bother with religion anymore.

There's a few exceptions to this (Ireland, Poland, much of the Balkans) but the trend has been a downward one for the past few decades.

>>672878
>Poland

I am Polish, and believe me, people can't be more secular. Polish Catholicism was, I shit you not, always anticlerical and people always took everything with a huge grain of salt. The church was omnipresent because it was so tightly interwoven with social and cultural life after centuries of oppression on part of the occupying powers. Nowadays, the Church, although wealthy, is a corpse when it comes to its power to rally people behind any cause. The church attendance is scoring all times lows aside from a few isolated Jesuslands.

>>672896
Weird, I always thought Poland was the one exception to the trend. Don't 65% of Poles attend church regularly? That's much higher than anywhere in the west, including the US.

>>672744
>What made the USA so religious?
Religion

>>672841
No it isn't. USA was founded as a liberal, secular republic since the very beginning. Then it switched to religious side.

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>>672917
>Don't 65% of Poles attend church regularly?

Nope. Pic related. Note, this is data provided by the church itself, so it's very likely ballooned anyway.

>>672929
It always had a religious aspect to it. Secular just means there's no state sponsored church.

>>672896
This is exactly how i would describe america

>>672917
Different anon here, but like 40-50%. Less than 20% receive Eucharist in a regular manner though.
Young people are massively secular too. I'm 26 and out of my circle of close friends I'm the only one to attend church at all. I know maybe 5 people in my age group who are somewhat deeply religious.

>>672878
>>672896
its mostly meme and part of national identity ie we are nation of good faithful Christians unlike those despicable heathen Englishmen, Russians or Turks.

>>672841
lack of balls and spine

>>672744

Founded by religious zealots and so big that other religious zealots have plenty of room to hide and grow.

>>672814
>its being replaced by new religions like...

Islam, don't even joke

>>672841
Yeah - I have to agree with this.

Think back 100 or even 50 years to a time when the US & W Europe were of a similar religious thinking.
Its not so much 'Why is the US so religious' but 'Why are they still so religious?

>>672744
Being founded by people who probably would have gone to war over their beliefs if they hadn't had anywhere else to go.

After the Christian equivalent of Wahhabism started in Europe, they found that most Christians didn't see eye-to-eye with it and wouldn't let them run the government according to their eccentric preferences (although they had a temporary chance after the English Civil War), so they left out of frustration to found colonies in America where they could express themselves; their ideology continues to influence the country to this day.

The US was always religious. Just because Jefferson was a heterodox christian doesn't mean the early US was some fedorafest. Read what Ben Franklin had to say about American Religious Life in his pamphlet "Information to Those Who Would Remove to America"

>The almost general Mediocrity of Fortune that prevails in America obliging its People to follow some Business for subsistence, those Vices, that arise usually from Idleness, are in a great measure prevented. Industry and constant Employment are great preservatives of the Morals and Virtue of a Nation. Hence bad Examples to Youth are more rare in America, which must be a comfortable Consideration to Parents. To this may be truly added, that serious Religion, under its various Denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practised. Atheism is unknown there; Infidelity rare and secret; so that persons may live to a great Age in that Country, without having their Piety shocked by meeting with either an Atheist or an Infidel. And the Divine Being seems to have manifested his Approbation of the mutual Forbearance and Kindness with which the different Sects treat each other, by the remarkable Prosperity with which He has been pleased to favour the whole Country.

God.

Lack of intelligence

America is pretty much the only country on the world that doesn't teach basic math like calculus in high school

>>672878
>>672896
Same thing for Orthodox Balkans. Most Serbs you meet will appear like 100% atheists until you ask them about their religious beliefs. Being Orthodox is seen as a part of national identity for the similar reason Poleanon said: Serbian Orthodox Church was keeper of Serbian culture and language and a shepherd for the people during the occupation, but nowadays it can only rally extreme right wingers to its cause and hardly anyone else.

>>673198
From what I heard on the Internet, you can't really generalize about US education, it can vary vastly from place to place.

>>673198
>America is pretty much the only country on the world that doesn't teach basic math like calculus in high school

this is not even remotely true

>>673266
It does, even inside single urban areas. The hierarchy of how good a school is going to be generally follows this pattern.

Rich whites = rich latinos > middle-class whites > lower-class whites = middle-class latinos > middle to upper-class blacks >>>> poor latinos = poor blacks

>>672878
>World War I and II destroyed any power the churches had over the populace.
LIES
It was that the Victorians had no Response to Darwin.
The Germans and their intellectual centers began to be funded not by the Church but by donars and the government.
God fell out of philosophy with all of the existentialists asking for meaning and the scientists claiming to have found it.

>>672841
>secular and atheist are interchangeable words
stop

>>673450
It's gonna be a long while before Islam replaces the entrenched systems in Europe which, if anything, favor centrist Christian parties like Germany

>>672878
>Ireland

How out of touch can you be? Religion doesn't has no influence in Ireland any more.

We literally fucking voted for same-sex marriage.

>>672746
The colonies or the nation itself?
Because the founding fathers were deists

>>672780
This is the answer

>>672814
>The people who moved to the US abandoned their national identity
not remotely true. Even after the Revolutionary War there were many native-born americans who considered themselves properly "English".

>>673198
>no calculus in high school
That's not even vaguely true

>>673870
>founding fathers weren't Christian

When will this meme die

>>673929
The majority were, nominally at least, some weren't.

The end.

>>673949
Who wasn't a Christian besides Thomas Paine? Paine was barely one to begin with.

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>>672744

reaction to industrialization and westward expansion, desire to curb harmful social vices like drunkenness, desire to create class cohesion after the disappearance of paternalist work system

>>673963
Barely a founding father*

>>673870
>muh founding fathers
I hope you are aware that the religious views of a country are shaped by it's actual population and not by a handful of secularists

>>672744
today in particular? the cold war.

>>672780
You can't /thread yourself. /threading is a way for people to say they agree with you

>>673963
Was Jefferson a Christian? If so, not a very good one.

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>>672814
>abandoning their old ethnicity

Not true at all Americans take a lot of pride in their ethic make up Germans are proud to be german. Italians hold on to a lot of their cultural heritage too.

I'm Irish >inb4 plastic patty
I have strong ties to Ireland despite my family being in America for 4 generations the lastest yet I am still 100 % Irish families marry into eachother to preserve our heritage

>>673963
Ben Franklin was a deist, even then he was of scientific persuasion.
Thomas Jefferson cut pages out of the bible, that is to say, pages he soundly found to be ridiculous.

What is more important is that even if all the founding fathers were stout, dutiful Catholics, their idea remained the same.

Religion has no place in Governance. Simple as that.

>>673198
Fuck man, even within a school system itself, what's taught varies wildly. I graduated with three semesters worth of college credits, learned Spanish (Though it didn't really stick), Calculus, Physics, and worked half the day as an IT guy my senior year. The lowest of my classmates had Geometry as their highest math taught, and a few things like general sciences that briefly touched on different branches.

It pretty much depends on who you have in question how educated they are. I knew one guy who graduated high school a few years after me who was also getting his associates degree from college at the same time.

>>674381
>plastic patty

We're all plastic here, some sort of bastardized version of our ancestors. I actually quite like it, if for no other reason than it's like being an alien from another planet when I go to Europe.

>>674318
Yeah I understand that
He mentioned the founders so I was addressing that point

I get that the U.S. isn't a Muslim nation even if it's leader is
It is definitely still Kenyan though

>>674347
>>674392

Jefferson considered himself a christian and believed strongly in christian virtues. Of course he was pretty heterodox, anti-clerical and specifically hated Calvinists referring to Calvin as a Demonist Athiest. Here is Jefferson in his own words talking about the "jefferson bible".

>I too have made a wee little book, from the same materials, which I call the Philosophy of Jesus. it is a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book, and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. a more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen. it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel, and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what it’s Author never said nor saw. they have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not recognise one feature.

While Franklin and Jefferson both mentioned good things about Deists they didn't necessarily believe or understand it's tenets. They both often spoke of God's providence which pretty much goes against the main idea of Deism.

>>674392
>Religion has no place in Governance.

Federal Government, the states could do what ever the fuck they wanted regarding religion's role in government.

>>674468

Deism doesn't have any tenets to refute except believing in God.

Whether Jefferson considered himself a Christian or not, which he did, he refuted the claim Jesus was God and had supernatural powers, a fundamental part of all mainstream Christianity.

As for Jefferson's idea that you could slice all the supernatural out of the Gospels and be left with great moral philosophy.

>I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

C. S. Lewis.

>>674561
C.S Lewis was wrong, its a false dilemma he has set up. or a false trilemma as it were.

>>674468
Jefferson damned himself by cutting up the bible, and making himself out to be like Jesus, as he cut away the divinity, cut away the miracles, cut away the supernatural, and left himself only with a man of good heart and conscience, killed for objecting to Roman government.

Jefferson was a fool.

>>674581

What are you're actual disputes with C.S. Lewis' statement rather than declaring it wrong and false via assertion?

Also I would point out, again, that Deism isn't a separate specific sect of Christianity with 'tenets' or 'beliefs' (other than believing in a God) to refute or understand. It was a general trend within Christianity to move away from supernatural claims to just believing in God, which is the main point from my post, which you have casually ignored.

>>674581
He said He is God, and created the world, and can forgive all sin, so if He's right, He's God. If He's wrong, He's a lunatic, or a liar.

But yes, please feel free to add another viable option to Lord, Liar or Lunatic.

>>673870
52 of the 55 signers were christians, and about three dozen of them christian pastors.

Only 1 or 2 identified themselves as deists.

>>674632
>>674626
>He said He is God,
No the bible says he said that, and not even in the earliest copies of mark. So he is only quoted as saying that decades later by authors who did not know him.

Most likely the claim was invented by his followers after he died. Ancient authors rarely had problems putting their own thoughts in the mouths of those they were writing about and the gospels are probably some of the best examples of this

>>674669

I am a bit befuzzled by what you are trying to say here.

Non-trinitarianism most definitely is not mainstream Christianity.

>>674681
>Non-trinitarianism most definitely is not mainstream Christianity.

I didnt say that it is.

>I am a bit befuzzled by what you are trying to say here.

I am saying that the gospels are propaganda rather than an accurate account of Jesus's life, and he most likely never claimed to actually be God

>>674669
Mark 1
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Kind begets kind. God begets God. By being the Son of God, He is God.

Mark was writing about Jesus as the ox, as the suffering servant, to the Romans. Nobody cares where a servant comes from, or where he goes. So Mark has nothing about where Jesus came from, or where He goes.

Context.
Author.
Audience.

These things are important.

And obviously, all of the rest of the authors made it well known that Jesus is God.

>>674694

You base your "most likely" on what, again?

Your own personal beliefs?

>>674698
Your argument is nonsense, the gospel of mark is the earliest gospel, and the oldest copies did not even include the appearance of the resurrected Jesus, later Christians added the part in.

except for that added part, Jesus never claims in it to be equal to the father, or God.

>>674702
I am showing that there are other alternatives to Jesus being a liar, madman, or God.

But there are many secular scholars who have come to the same belief I have,

>>674714

Is Mark the only book in the New Testament?

Revelation 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

>>674694
>I am saying that the gospels are propaganda rather than an accurate account of Jesus's life, and he most likely never claimed to actually be God

I didn't say that he did. Although I think it most probably likely "Jesus" did exist as an individual in history we can't know that for certain and that the Gospels are largely fictional. I also hold that we know virtually nothing about his life, other than, perhaps, he got crucified.

>>674725
You are saying that your alternative is "Jesus did not even exist".

Do you know what a minority of thought you are in with that statement?

>>674740
>the Gospels are largely fictional.

Again, what is the basis for your beliefs? Your personal preferences?

>>674736
>Is Mark the only book in the New Testament?
No, but Revelations is one the last written, and quoting "Jesus" in it as if that is something he actually said, rather than the product of a "vision" of a man most likely using shrooms does not do your position service

>>674744
You are saying that your alternative is "Jesus did not even exist".

No, I am not saying this

>>674753
Not him but the consensus of historians hold that only two events in Jesus's life are largely above dispute, his baptism by John and his crucifixion

>>674760
Removing one word from the Revelation places a man under condemnation.

I shudder to think about removing the entire book.

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>>674773
>Removing one word from the Revelation places a man under condemnation.
>because Revelations says so
>and removing one word from the Revelation places a man under condemnation.

>>674766
Met many historians? Do they strike you as godly and conservative folks?

>>674786
That's kawaii as fuck

>>674791
>Met many historians? Do they strike you as godly and conservative folks?

Hey there not saying your wrong about Jesus, just extremely likely to be wrong.

>>674632
I'm going to go with liar.

>>672757
>Savages
Kill yourself my man.

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>>674753

Again? I think you might be getting me mixed up with someone else. Welcome to the anonymous image board culture / discussion. That was the first time I had mentioned the Gospels.

What are my disputes with the historical reliability of the Gospels?

1. They were written by anonymous authors that were part of a cult. Take out your Bible and read the Gospels and ignore the titles (which were added later) and you will see they are written in the third person by anonymous individuals that never claimed to have known Jesus.

2. They were written decades after Jesus' death.

3. They were written in a language Jesus and his followers couldn't speak or read or write in (if any of them, including Jesus, could read or write at all and actually existed).

4. They don't agree with each other on multiple issues.

5. They make claims about a zombie invasion, an eclipse, a census and an earthquake, all major events, that are not attested in other sources.

6. They appear to be written as works of lierature rather than as historical biographies.

7. The synoptic Gospels seem to be sourced from the first one, Mark. John is the zaniest of all and was written latest.

>>672929
>No it isn't. USA was founded as a liberal, secular republic since the very beginning. Then it switched to religious side.

The first generation of our leaders were, the common man in the 13 colonies were not big on the idea of secularism. However they could easily find the issue of taxation in British coinage being unacceptable. There was shortage of hard cash inside and all almost the hard cash they had was Spanish. Basically meaning that they would have to buy the currency (at much higher then face value) to pay their taxes.

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>>672744
>What made the USA so religious?
Well, there have always been a lot of religious folk in America.

If you're asking why the right got so religious, this book claims to answer that question, and it's pretty good and well argued.

Democracy allows retarded people to elect retarded leaders which encourage this shit

>>674818
He's clearly speaking from their perspective with that comment

>>674561
Don't Deists believe in a god that doesn't interfere in the world? All the founding fathers definitely believed in an active god.