in ... Great Britain, where there is a direct connection between State and Church ... I would be considered a heretic, an apostate, and a rebel. |
But only in theory. As I think you know, the United Kingdom retains these ancient customs and titles, yet since at least the 18th century England (in particular) has had a reputation for irreligion that delighted visiting freethinking
philosophes, from the continent, most notably Voltaire...
... there is, for example, almost no 'religious right' in contemporary British political discourse - making even British Tories remarkably socially liberal by American standards. You have elsewhere written interestingly about your time amongst born-again zealots in England, but this type of religion in the UK represents a tiny minority within an overall minority (christians in general) and is, like blue jeans, Coca-Cola and McDonalds yet another importation into the UK of American culture (but much less successful, it seems, than those things that one can actually wear or eat).
The US, on the other hand, remains a genuinely religious, primarily Protestant nation, despite its careful separation of church and state. Indeed, it is arguable that it has become much more avowedly Christian over time (perhaps in large measure as a result of a conscious decision to frame itself as a nation 'Under God' in sharp distinction with communist atheism - the enemy against which it strove as it came into its own as a world superpower). I think it is probably from this era that the automatic equation of 'patriot' with 'christian' entered the American psyche.
The reason, in my opinion, is that, as America has become more self-confident and lost its 'cultural cringe' - or feeling of cultural inferiority towards Europe - it has sought more and more to create a civilisation that is truly and uniquely 'American'. Along with its wealth and military might, the US today has an astonishing hegemony in the world of popular culture. And alongside this I would argue that at some stage Americans have also tried to find a form of religion that equally owes as little as possible to Europe and the Old World. In part this has been achieved by new religious forms - such as the LDS Church, which overcomes the astonishing lapse in the Old and New Testaments, whereby the world's greatest nation is not even mentioned. More subtly it has been done by re-interpretating its dominant protestant tradition in a new, fundamentalist fashion that, while claiming to take the faith back to its pristine New Testament origins, has actually created a largely new, anti-rationalist, ultra-materialist and theocratically inclined form of an older, 'foreign' faith...
... just some thoughts. [Interesting article]