Cultural differences between the United States and Europe

Friday 20 February 2026

In a speech delivered at the Munich Security Conference in February 2026 the United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, sought to reassure his European audience that beneath the friction of recent years there remains a deep civilisational unity between Europe and the United States. That unity, he argued, rests upon shared Christian values, a common intellectual inheritance and a transatlantic history of mutual defence and democratic aspiration.

The claim is at once familiar and controversial. Familiar—because for most of the twentieth century it formed the implicit grammar of the Atlantic alliance. Controversial—because in the early twenty-first century the cultural assumptions underpinning that unity appear increasingly strained.

The question is not whether Europe and the United States share a common past. They plainly do. The political thought of the Enlightenment travelled from Britain and France to America’s founding generation; the moral vocabulary of Christianity shaped public institutions on both sides of the ocean; the calamities of two world wars and the long twilight of the Cold War were endured together. Rather, the question is whether that shared past still provides a reliable guide to a shared future.

Nowhere are the differences more visible than in the twin spheres of immigration and religion.

Immigration has always been central to the American story. The United States understands herself as a nation of settlers and arrivals, a polity defined less by blood than by constitutional creed. Periods of restriction and xenophobia have punctuated that history, but the dominant myth remains one of renewal through migration. Even contemporary arguments in Washington, however heated, are framed within that conceptual architecture: how many, under what rules, with what enforcement. The principle that immigration is intrinsic to American identity is rarely challenged outright.

In Europe the picture is more complex. Several European states—France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden—experienced large-scale immigration only after the Second World War, often as a consequence of labour shortages or the legacies of empire. The integration of Muslim communities in particular has become a focal point of political anxiety. In some states, demographic change has occurred rapidly enough to produce a sense of cultural dislocation, especially in smaller cities and rural regions. Political parties sceptical of immigration have gained influence not merely as fringe movements but as contenders for power.

The divergence lies not simply in numbers but in narrative. The United States continues, despite polarisation, to describe herself as a project—an idea open to those who assent to her principles. Europe, by contrast, often conceives of herself as a civilisation rooted in historical continuity. When immigration is debated in Europe, it is frequently framed as a question of cultural preservation. When it is debated in America, it is more commonly framed as a question of border control and economic opportunity.

Religion compounds the contrast. Secretary Rubio’s invocation of shared Christian values rests upon a historical truth: both Europe and the United States were profoundly shaped by Christianity. Yet contemporary religiosity differs markedly. The United States remains, by the standards of the developed world, a comparatively religious society. Public references to God are common in political speech; church attendance, though declining, remains higher than in most European countries; and religious affiliation continues to inform political identity.

Much of Western Europe, by contrast, has undergone a pronounced process of secularisation. In countries such as France and the Czech Republic, regular religious practice has fallen dramatically over recent decades. The public square in Europe tends to be more explicitly secular; in France, the doctrine of laïcité treats religion as a private matter, sometimes uneasily so. Political arguments framed in overtly theological language are generally met with scepticism.

This difference matters because it shapes how questions of immigration are perceived. In the United States, debates about migration intersect with evangelical activism, Catholic social teaching and other religious traditions that emphasise hospitality and moral responsibility. In Europe, where religious institutions have less public authority, debates about Muslim immigration are often conducted in terms of social cohesion, security and liberal values rather than theological pluralism.

Yet it would be a mistake to exaggerate the gulf. American society is also secularising, especially among younger generations. European politics still draws, often implicitly, upon Christian ethical traditions—ideas of human dignity, solidarity and the sanctity of life that underpinned the post-war welfare state and the architecture of European integration. The European Union’s founding generation, although cautious about confessional politics, was deeply influenced by Christian democratic thought.

What has changed is less the presence of Christianity than its function. In mid-twentieth-century Europe and America, Christian identity could serve as a broad cultural adhesive—binding disparate social classes and ethnic groups within a shared moral horizon. Today, in both continents, it is more likely to be a marker of political contestation. In the United States, religious affiliation often correlates with partisan alignment. In Europe the invocation of “Christian Europe” is sometimes deployed by nationalist movements as a boundary against perceived external influence.

Secretary Rubio’s appeal to common Christian values therefore operates on two levels. On one level, it is a reminder of historical continuity—an assertion that the Atlantic alliance is not merely transactional but civilisational. On another level, it is an intervention in contemporary debates about identity, suggesting that the United States and Europe must recover a sense of shared moral purpose if they are to navigate an era of geopolitical rivalry and internal division.

For Europe the challenge lies in reconciling demographic change with social stability—acknowledging her increasingly plural character while preserving the liberal norms that define her political order. For the United States the challenge lies in sustaining a civic nationalism capacious enough to integrate newcomers without fragmenting into mutually unintelligible cultural enclaves.

The emerging differences are therefore not absolute but directional. Europe is more secular, more anxious about immigration as a cultural question and more inclined to treat religion as a private matter. The United States remains more publicly religious, more rhetorically committed to immigration as a national story and more comfortable with overt moral language in politics. These tendencies shape policy, rhetoric and public expectation.

Whether they amount to a civilisational divergence is less clear. The Atlantic community has weathered profound disagreements before—over Suez, over Vietnam, over Iraq. What made those disagreements survivable was a belief that beneath policy disputes lay a shared understanding of human rights, constitutional governance and the moral worth of the individual.

If that belief erodes—if Europe and the United States come to see one another not as variations within a common civilisation but as representatives of incompatible cultural models—then the transatlantic relationship will become more fragile than any trade dispute or defence burden-sharing argument could make it.

Secretary Rubio’s speech may therefore be read less as a declaration of existing unity than as a plea for its renewal. The shared Christian inheritance he invoked is not a policy programme. It is a historical memory—one that must be interpreted in societies now marked by pluralism, scepticism and rapid change.

The Atlantic alliance was built not only upon power but upon a conviction that liberty and human dignity are universal aspirations. Whether framed in explicitly Christian language or in the secular vocabulary of rights, that conviction remains the true common denominator. The cultural differences now emerging need not be fatal. But they require honesty. Unity cannot be assumed; it must be argued for—patiently, respectfully and with an awareness that both Europe and the United States are themselves in the midst of profound transformation.