Religion als Wettbewerb

This paper starts with the observation that the United States and Europe, both members of the family of “western-type-modern societies”, should (according to the still prevailing theories of modernization) follow the same pattern of development including secularization. They obviously don’t, which invites questions about those theories in general, but also about what is the rule (if there is any) and what is the exception, the United States where organized religion grew stronger and stronger during the last two centuries, or secular Europe? Contrary to Gunnar Myrdals still influential description of the “American Creed”, American culture or the “American Way of Life” were not anticipated by the pilgrims and then became independent of their religious roots. They rather developed against the puritan political theology and shaped the public discourse by providing an unregulated market they had by no means intended. Religious choice (at first not acknowledged but practiced by those who declined communion with an increasing number of less qualified immigrants and therefore built their own more exclusive communities) became the driving force. Choice produced religious competition (primarily in American Protestantism with now more than 300 denominations) which in turn explains the two distinguishing features of American Religion. If you are dissatisfied with the teaching or the devotional style of the religion you were born into, you can join another one instead of abandoning religion all together. (One third of Americans who are members of a congregation today have practiced this “Church Switching”). As individual discontent does not discourage from religious affiliations as such, so does social change not operate against organized religion if there is choice and therefore competition. Quite to the contrary every major cultural and political change was anticipated by a religious movement whose success moved this former minority into the mainstream, so it also gained members while the loosing part began to recover and regain intellectual power and following once it came up with a cultural critique of the present establishment.