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OCT 31 INDEX NOV 02
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from First Things
AMERICA IN THE EUROPEAN MIND
In recent years, there’s been no shortage of commentary on European anti-Americanism and the divide between Americans and Europeans on a number of issues—religion, most of all. The reasons for such a divide are complex and tied both to history and to how we think about history. For Americans, our national story is intimately connected to tales of devout, beleaguered Europeans leaving the Old World for religious freedom. It’s a story in which prominent Catholics, such as Jacques Maritain and John Courtney Murray, have pointed to the American experiment as a means of helping the Catholic Church, roiled by the militant anticlericalism of post-1789 Europe, come to regard liberal democracy and religious freedom in a positive light. In short, the story we often tell about ourselves suggests a measure of European sympathy for the American experiment. But another distinctly European “narrative construction” of America in general, and American religious life in particular, deserves more attention. It is well-developed, laden with invocatory power, and familiar to Europe’s knowledge classes, not to mention to what the sociologist Peter Berger calls America’s own “Europeanized intelligentsia.” Attentiveness to this narrative provides a more nuanced understanding of contemporary anti-Americanism. Intrinsic to this second narrative is the assumption that America’s early experiment in voluntary religion constitutes a worrisome special path to modernity, especially in view of the high levels of religious belief that this system has since fostered. This special path, in turn, helps account for why the United States presents a political “anomaly” on the world stage in contrast to normal (meaning properly secularized) Western industrialized nations. It also helps explain Europeans’ fascination with American religious life and their inability to translate this fascination from caricature and condescension to understanding and engagement.
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from The Spokesman-Review
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