Christians generally maintain a persecution complex even when they are holding tremendous power over others in their society, and this goes back centuries. It is extremely common for Christians to talk about slight curtailment of their ability to oppress others as persecution.
How would Catholicism represent the mean of public opinion?
Christians (even if in name only) have maintained majority control of the executive, judicial, and legislative branches since inception. They often still publicly swear an oath with a hand on the bible.
- The founder's didn't even believe in the Bible, likely including George Washington.
- Stated vs revealed preferences are complicated among politicians.
- being jewish clearly has an influence on politicians and businessmen who identify that way, and they often make reference to it. Can you give an example of a president or supreme court judge revealing that kind of influence? George bush doesn't even believe religion is the root issue in the conflict with the Middle East.
The enormous power exists in the voters within the USA, because it's a democracy filled with many who hold religious views, despite the theoretical separation of church and state.
"In God We Trust" on the money is a superficial symptom of that.
The claim that is addressing is that religion is the mean of popular belief. How does that account for the Catholic experience? Catholics are obviously a minority among American christians and have less political power.
> The latter, broader, category is the majority of the population across the USA.
Indeed. However they are not organized in any way. The percentage who has been to a church more than 3x in their life is probably significantly lower.