Quote:
Originally posted by Undertoad
In England I was forced to sing hymns and recite religious things that I did not believe in, in public school. And there was, for centuries past, an official state religion. But they had fewer churches, and possibly fewer churchgoers, because the country wasn't as wealthy as the US.
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I think that the lack of a free market of ideas in the religous sector leads to a smaller number of church goers. In America there is a church for anyone who is interested in such things. We've got Unitarians, Quakers, Methodists, Presbeterians, Baptists, Catholics East and West, Orthodox Jews, Reformed Jews, Bahai, Hindu, Buddist, almost anything goes. Its like the schools in America, I'm already paying for my local school so why would I bother finding something better.
Jefferson saw the incompetence of the state supported church in Williamsburg. The worst debris of the Church of England got that backwater posting. He could see how the local church was corrupted by the free ride.