 acceptable to most other intellectuals. Burjee have become curiously placed intelligentsia on certain of their own faith, on certain of their position, the position of the church, and unsure whether they agree. They say that simple men believe the right things for their own reasons. They have no real continuity with the actual beliefs of the past, but only with the forms, the rituals, and the organization. At the same time, they have no part in the faster-moving intellectual debate within their own society. Neither scientists, nor literary intellectuals or social scientists, secular professors seek theological opinions. The moral field was once a place where church's judgment held complete sway. But now Christian clergy have increasing difficulty in making pronouncements on moral issues without the benefit of quote unquote scientific information. There's no longer much confidence in God's word or in God's guidance. So before an archbishop feels equipped to comment on the moral implications of TV, he calls for an inquiry, scientific inquiry into its effects. So clergymen are still socially prestigious, but tends to be quite poorly paid. They're rabbi's tend to make a lot more than Christian clergy. So during the 20th century, enrollment in church membership dramatically increased in the United States. We have rates of church attendance in the United States dramatically higher than in Europe. So what the heck is going on? So it seems the United States manifests a high degree of religious activity. But this academic says you can't call America anything other than a secularized country. United States is the country in which instrumental values, rational procedures, technical methods have gone the furthest. It is the country in which the sense of the sacred, sense of the sanctity of life, and deep religiosity are most conspicuously absent. So travelers of the past to America noted the apparent extensiveness of church membership, but they also found religion in America to be superficial. So the dominant American values are not religious. American culture is marked by central stress upon personal achievement, especially secular occupational achievement. The success story and the respect accorded to the self-made man are distinctly American, but these are not religious values. So we've got high rates of church attendance in a markedly secular society. So the values of religion in America are not autonomous. They derive from American values. Going to church is one of the values of American life. It's one of the things that has been expected of all upright citizens. So the basis of social unity shifted from community values to the maintenance of an institution. But the skeleton of social order is more acceptable to people held in the mantle of decency, which religion provides. Religion does not dictate social value, but reflects them, reflects social value. So all denominations in sex fulfill this function, making good Americans. So the denominations in America tend to minimize differences with each other. So the tenor of life in America is highly impersonal. Individuals are often exposed to manipulation. Economic organizations society has reached giant proportions. So there is a persistent demand, something which provides a less associational and more communal orientation. So because Americans are constantly on the move, there are a few spontaneous agencies to support community life. So the church takes on functions and provides facilities which give the impression of community life, a synthetic version of community life. So the church in America represents the values of the agrarian or communal pre-industrial society. So this community is not so much a fossil as a reproduction piece. And it works for people who have less experience of community life in a traditional society. So it's very synthetic. It will seem fake to people from Europe. So people from traditional cultures find American religion particularly shallow. It contains the personalized gestures of the impersonal society which carry a macabre quality for those who have experienced the real thing. So people get some sentimental satisfaction from pretending that the church provides real community. The church is particularly important for first generation immigrants as a way that they could carry on their speech and customs. So churches in America fulfill their function of supporting the American nation at the cost of losing their distinctiveness of tradition. So the teachings of the Christian churches in America tend to grow ever more vacuous because whether they persist in their distinctive theological orientations, they become new agencies of divisiveness. In a nation of so many differences, more divisiveness would be intolerable. So American sense is a powder keg with all the racial, religious, ethnic differences. And so there's a national ethic of ignoring the importance of those differences, denying the reality of those differences. So second generation immigrants tend to ignore the churches which remind them of their past. So only as the churches become more similar to each other, more indistinct in ideology. Can they satisfy the various needs of the third generations for community life and reassurance? At the same time reassure them about their commitment to American nationality. So the American way of life is about going to church without much concern about which church anyone went to. Religion has become privatized. The differences are as significant as different brands of cigarettes or different family names. So churches function as community centers. So President Eisenhower would assert that a man should have a faith no matter what, which one it was. President Johnson, a disciple and his wife and Episcopalian asserted their daughter's conversion to Roman Catholicism did not disturb them since religion was a private matter. In America, one religion is as good as another. This is an American value. It's not a Christian value. It has no pedigree in Christianity. So belonging to a church in America has become completely unconnected with a distinctive belief to an extent, unparalleled in Europe. So we have a process of secularization in two different countries, America and Europe, which has taken radically different forms. But that each place has become increasingly secularized, cannot be doubted. So with United Kingdom, we have a traditional society in which religious adherents and church attendants are sharply declined. In America, through the first 70 years of 20th century, church attendants declined. But at the cost of religion giving up its distinctive claims, becoming increasingly vacuous, primarily functioning as a simulcra of a traditional community, a macabre simulcra.