Is “secularism” dehumanizing?
Here Carroll refers to Romney’s condemnation of the “collapse” of religion in Europe as a condemnation of the “religion of secularism.” And it is here that Carroll makes what I think is his most cogent point. I firmly believe that most Americans, unfortunately not excluding Presidential candidates and the gatekeepers in the media, totally misunderstand the role of religion in most of Europe, perhaps because of the almost bellicose language of people like the current Pope. So let me ofer the complete paragraph in which Carroll discusses this and provides a contrast with the US: Yet such American smugness seems to miss the largest point of difference between the Old World and the New. In the very years that majorities of Europeans were walking away from organized religion, they were resolutely turning away from government-sanctioned killing, whether through war or through the death penalty; they were leaving behind narrow notions of nationalism, mitigating state sovereignty, and, above a
