Religion is a cause of perplexity to the British. On the one hand it is associated with Christian virtue, traditional values, the Dalai Lama and all things bright and beautiful. On the other hand it brings to mind violent fanaticism, reactionary morality, Osama bin Laden, abuse and oppression. After a long history of religious turmoil and mistrust we no longer much mind whether our leaders are Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or agnostic, but strong commitment makes us worried. Tolerance is the great commandment of the modern ageand hence we find it hard to tolerate exacting belief. God seems more at home in the United States. Although the Constitution keeps prayer out of state schools, it also guarantees that no religion is officially preferred to another and that all are free to exercise their chosen faith. There is a widespread expectation that public figures will be religious (and will be the better for it). Churches, synagogues and temples have for generations served as welcome centres for newcomers, thereby assisting in the transformation of immigrants into Americans and of strangers into locals. Elites in both countries hold up the other nation as a cautionary example. Britons shudder at public piety and the conviction that God's will coincides with the preacher's (or the president's). Americans see moral relativism and reliance on the state as symptoms of a lack of religious fibre. Each, for the other, has deviated from the preferred path of human progress and these religious tensions occasionally impinge on the 'special relationship' between Britain and America. It is hard to understand the causes of religious change or the nature of modernisation itself without engaging in such transatlantic comparisons. The secularisation thesis-the idea that modernisation causes problems for religion-remains a key point of reference in the social scientific study of religion (Bruce, 2002), and Britain and the US are respectively example and apparent counterexample to it.
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