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Originally Posted by Nodrog
While it may be true that Americans are on average 'more Christian' than British people, it should also be pointed out that[...]. Its swings and roundabouts really.
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As someone who had to say the Lord's prayer a zillion times, I'd prefer the British situation to be honest. (And Northern Ireland is more an ethno-national than anything else - it'd be very odd to describe the (Provos) IRA as "Catholic fundamentalists" for instance - they weren't fighting over even vaguely religious issues, and if you add in the INLA and "Official" IRA, half of them were (not very good) leftists anyway).
Although it occurred to me recently that Britain's secular status is probably maintained by a slightly more successful version of the "liberal elite" that US-fundies rant against. I would imagine that British people are on average slightly more religious than an outsider might assume viewing our media, etc.
Obviously I've very little evidence to back this up, but I suspect in the average meeting of senior civil servants / senior managers in private company or board meeting, etc, etc - if anyone was enthusiastically and openly religious it would be mest with embarrassment if nothing else. Maybe the same thing is true on Wall Street too (not sure) but America's sheer size means that things like "talk radio" become very important. As I've said before though, if the only cultural products you got from America were its sit-coms and movies (or most of it's music), you'd be forgiving for thinking religion is reasonably rare.