“If God is for us…”
By Bobby Beecher
Is America's superpower status the result of religious devotion? Many Christians believe it is. They can't prove, of course, that a correlation exists between faith and firepower or wealth and worship. But there's no doubt that the rich and robust United States is one of the most pious nations on Earth.
Religious faith is indeed pervasive in America, despite secularizing pressures from the mass media and the “wall of separation” between church and state. Moreover, America's predominant religion isn't some kind of watered-down New Age theism. Most Americans are Biblical literalists, Christians who believe — as the editors of Newsweek magazine recently discovered — “the Virgin Birth, the angelic proclamation to the shepherds, the Star of Bethlehem and the Wise Men from the East” were actual historical events.
And that's not all. According to a poll conducted for Newsweek by Princeton Survey Research Associates, 67 percent of Americans believe “the entire story of Christmas” and 55 percent believe “every word of the Bible is literally accurate.”
An overwhelming majority of Americans, 82 percent, believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ and 52 percent believe that “Jesus will return to Earth someday.”
At least one of the poll's findings has important political implications. An astounding 62 percent of Americans “favor teaching creation science in addition to evolution in public schools,” and nearly half would like to see creation scientists replace the disciples of Darwin in public school classrooms.
But dogmatic adherence to the “old time religion” could be driving a wedge between America and our so-called “friends and allies” in Europe.
In the summer of 2003, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted a seminar entitled God and Foreign Policy: The Religious Divide Between the U.S. and Europe. The forum, which was moderated by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, included presentations from Justin Vaisse of the Brookings Institution and Craig Kennedy of the German Marshall Fund. The luminaries reported that a spiritual ocean separates the U.S. and Europe, and that bridging this cultural gulf may prove impossible.
For example, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, 59 percent of Americans feel “religion is a very important part of their lives.” Only 11 percent of the French feel that way, while 21 percent of Germans, 27 percent of Italians, and 33 percent of the British acknowledge religious faith as an important part of their lives.
Moreover, most Americans (58 percent) argue that a belief in God is essential to individual morality. But, according to the Pew survey, “overwhelming majorities of the Europeans say it's not necessary to believe in God to be a moral person.”
Many Europeans share the opinion of English journalist Paul Vallely, who wrote in The Independent of London that American “adherence to the outmoded tenets of religious belief” is “obscurantist” nonsense. Indeed, it's this kind open hostility to religion that prompted Francois Heisbourg, the director of a French think tank, to assert that Americans and Europeans are “no longer part of the same civilization.”
America's literalist Christians would no doubt agree. But they would also argue that the Europeans' rejection of the faith of their fathers has led to the continent's decline as a major force in world affairs. And this vacuum, they would add, has been filled by the United States, which has reaped the rewards in wealth and power the Bible promises to nations that remain faithful to God.
Ironically, Europe's decadent democracies are in danger of being overrun by militant Muslims from the Middle East and Africa. France, which is already the most anti-Christian nation in Europe, is now host to more than 4 million Muslims.
Once upon a time, Christian warriors like Charlemagne drove the “Saracens” from Europe. Now the only impediment to the Islamic domination of what used to be known as Christendom is Jacques Chirac and a silly ban on religious head coverings.
The Europeans think Americans are religious fanatics. But, as we say in South Georgia, they ain't seen nothing yet.
