ABSTRACT
Perhaps no other aspect of life in the United States fuels as much of what we call anti-Americanism as the ubiquity of religion in the United States. Nearly all the other societies that belong to the worlds of advanced capitalism and liberal democracy are fundamentally secular in orientation. Only in the United States does God play a major role in public discourse and public policy. Hence the widespread sense that however attractive America may be in some of its ways of life, it ought to be subject to criticism for the role that irrational and anti-modern forces play in its politics. To put it another way, Australia and the United States have much in common culturally, but when it comes to the role of religion the United States probably has more in common with Saudi Arabia than it does with Australia. It is often alleged that in the intensity of their faith, militant believers of Islam in the Middle East are similar to Christian fundamentalists in the United States, which partly explains their mutual antagonism. It is this persistent religiosity of the United States that so characterizes its public life and that makes it hard for other people to understand.
