Question

How did the United States differ from those countries in Europe where religious minorities faced persecution?

Answer 1

Answer:

Religion declines with economic development.  In a previous post that rattled around the Internet, I presented a scholarly explanation for this pattern: people who feel secure in this world have less interest in another one.

The basic idea is that wealth allows people to feel more secure in the sense that they are confident of having their basic needs met and expect to lead a long healthy life.  In such environments, there is less of a market for religion, the primary function of which is to help people cope with stress and uncertainty.

Some readers of the previous post pointed out that the U.S. is something of an anomaly because this is a wealthy country in which religion prospers.  Perhaps taking the view that one swallow makes a summer, the commentators concluded that the survival of religion here invalidates the security hypothesis. I do not agree.

Explanation:

The first point to make is that the connection between affluence and the decline of religious belief is as well-established as any such finding in the social sciences.  In research of this kind, the preferred analysis strategy is some sort of line-fitting exercise.  No researcher ever expects every case to fit exactly on the line, and if they did, something would be seriously wrong.