Interesting figures on the correlation between education level and religiosity in Europe and America. In Europe more education correlates with less church attendance while in America it’s opposite.

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Hmm that’s not really the full picture. It’s still true that more religious == less church in the US. The difference is for people who identify as Christian, which is the majority.

Hmm that’s not really the full picture. It’s still true that more religious == less church in the US. The difference is for people who identify as Christian, which is the majority.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/04/26/in-america-does-more-education-equal-less-religion/

U.S. churches as a third place.

But also I’ve noticed that churchgoing in the U.S. is a wildly social affair — everybody dresses up, goes at the same time, sings, eats, etc.

In Europe all I’ve ever seen is people going to pray by themselves in a mostly empty church, or attending a solemn mass where the priest would read from the Bible and then everybody goes home afterwards

So perhaps high ed -> high status -> social signaling in the U.S. versus low ed -> religiosity -> first-degree worship in EU (or something along those lines)

In the US we're so wildly separated by suburban sprawl, mega-highways and (what I'd guess to be) a higher average distance from family especially among the higher educated due to employer demands. Anecdotally, there's just not a lot else other than church that can provide a social outlet for many.

What do you think is the cause of this phenomenon

While being very interesting the comparison might be biased by the fact that some countries in EU are secular for long time or have been in time meaning that education is deeply/somewhat decorrelated from religion (and some anti religion). It would be interesting to compare US to an all time christian state in EU.