Why Christian Fundamentalism Thrives in America but Not in Europe

How the U.S. Still Clings to Fire-and-Brimstone Faith While Europe Mostly Moved On

One continent kept the rituals; the other turned it into a show with flags and fireworks.
You can’t scroll very far these days without running into some brand of U.S. fundamentalism. It yells from cable news, shows up on banned-book lists, insists on regulating women’s choices, sneaks prayer into gym class, then wraps it all in a flag and calls it freedom. Ask many Europeans what’s going on, and the most charitable response you’ll get is a raised eyebrow and the words, “What on earth?”

So how did one side of the Atlantic shake off the fire-and-brimstone vibe while the other turned it into a core identity? The blunt truth is staring us in the face.

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1. Europe Learned the Hard Way That Too Much Church Power Hurts Everyone

Europe got burned—literally and figuratively—by religion. For centuries, church leaders wore the real crown. Those who questioned priests were branded heretics. Scientists were tortured. Indulgences were sold like groceries. Armies marched off with God’s blessing.

After enough blood and hypocrisy, people finally said enough. The Enlightenment swept through, smashing superstition with reason. The French Revolution guillotined divine right. German philosophers poked holes in blind faith. British deists quietly turned their backs on miracles and focused on logic.

The lesson stuck: faith could live, but it shouldn’t rule. Europe separated religion from the state because it had seen too much of what happens when they share a bed.

Go to France or Denmark today and you’ll see people go to church for Christmas, weddings, or funerals—but not for marching orders. In most of Europe, religion got moved from the government office to the private corner. You can pray all you want—just don’t expect the national budget to kneel with you.

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“Those who were socialized during conditions of existential security have less need for religion; those whose formative years were marked by insecurity have much more need for religion.” — Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular.

“Deprivatization” is Casanova’s word for what happened when religion marched back into public life—politics, media, law—after we all assumed it would fade to private devotion. — José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World.

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2. America Was Born Screaming “God”

For America, religion isn’t something it grew into — it was baptized in it from the get-go. The Puritans crossed the ocean to build freedom for their own brand of theocracy while pretending they were seeking religious freedom.

The First Amendment is often called a wall between church and state, but in reality it was a truce between competing Christian sects. Each wanted to protect its own right to preach, legislate, and dominate without interference.

The Founding Fathers, many of them deists, weren’t exactly saints of secularism either. They spoke about “Nature’s God,” not the one in Revelation. The settlers weren’t reading Thomas Paine — they were quoting Leviticus and holding witch trials in Massachusetts.

That mix of freedom, fear, and fire has been bubbling ever since. Every major American moral crusade — from Prohibition to abortion bans — has been packaged as “God’s will.”

Europe, after centuries of holy wars, learned its lesson. Secularism there became more than separating church and state — it meant keeping religion out of politics altogether, to stop Christianity from being exploited again