Here is an interesting site:http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/us-d.html
Influence of Religion
In Germany, state and church are closely related, in a manner which must seem appalling to most Americans who believe in the complete separation of church and state. The "Konkordat", a contract entered into by Hitler and the Vatican in 1933 (Hitler offered it to have the church keep quiet about the holocaust, and it worked out rather well), as well as "Kirchenverträge" with the Evangelical Church mandate that churches get to teach religion in public schools, that the state collects church dues in the form of "church taxes", and that churches get access to public universities in order to train their clergy. Most of the German holidays are religious. Blasphemy, "if capable of jeopardizing public peace", is a crime. The biggest German party is called "Christian-Democratic Union".
All this has surprisingly little effect though; the Christian churches have far less influence on public life in Germany than in the US and are rapidly losing members. Only catholicism in Bavaria is a hold out. The main reason is that the overall degree of religiosity in the population is much lower. In the US, people actually go to church every Sunday, something mostly reserved for lonely elderly women in Germany. The proportion of people believing in God is higher in the US than in any other industrialized country. In Germany, people will laugh at you if you tell them that you literally believe the fairy tales of the bible; only some sort of "abstract religiosity" is acceptable. In the US, there are many people who believe what the bible says word for word, and they are not ashamed to say so. This may be an instance of a more general fact: Germans are a lot more skeptical and critical than Americans. Four little examples:
Many people in the US believe in UFO abductions
Americans will happily apply a chemical bug spray in their kitchen as long as it says "safe for humans" on the label
Americans believe that they have "saved" money if they buy something for $50 which has a crossed-out label of $100 attached to it
People actually send loads of money to Christian faith healers which stage the most ridiculous TV shows.
In Germany, the catholic church is generally considered to be more conservative than the protestant churches in social and political issues; the situation in the US is opposite. People on the "religious right", a large and influential movement populated mostly by white protestants, are vehemently opposed to abortion (several abortion doctors have been killed by people on the fringes), believe in the literal truth of the bible to the extend of opposing Darwinism (these people are called "creationists", a word that doesn't even exist in German nor would it be needed), oppose premarital sex, and call homosexuality a sinful choice. These same people also enthusiastically embrace the death penalty, private ownership of guns, military spending and lower taxes, without even noticing a contradiction to the Christian message of "Don't judge, live poor, love your enemies".
The bigot Christian influence can be felt throughout American life: no swearing on radio or TV is allowed (it is rather ironic to hear a beep whenever someone tried to say "fuck", especially in a country which prides itself in strong opposition to censorship), no nudity whatsoever on TV either, and no substantial sex education in the schools (resulting in the highest teen pregnancy rate of the developed world). The media discuss the whole topic of sex only in the context of crime or disease: there is a huge obsession with child molestation, rape, sexual harassment, AIDS etc.; Hollywood rarely shows sex in love movies but almost exclusively in "erotic thrillers", films which intimately link sex to some crime. Crimes involving sex generally carry higher penalties than non-sexual crimes. The advertised cure for AIDS is abstinence; ads favoring condom use cannot be shown on national broadcast TV and a broad condom promotion campaign by the government as in Germany is unthinkable. Some southern states in the US even prohibit the sale of vibrators. It is also rather difficult to buy condoms in the US; they are not available in public restrooms as in Germany. Public nudity at nudist beaches or co-ed saunas is extremely rare. Life sex acts cannot be shown in sex theaters. Anal or oral sex, even between married adults, are illegal in several US states; these laws are rarely enforced, but no lawmaker would dare to try to change them. Topics like legalization of prostitution are utterly unmentionable.
Still, the matter is not completely black-and-white; the American puritanism often only covers the surface. While it is legal in the US to display hard core pornography on internet web sites, this is not allowed in Germany. Similarly, the sex magazines that can be bought at regular newsstands are harder in the US than in Germany; in the US, satellite hard core porn channels can be ordered and this is not possible in Germany. There are certainly more strip clubs in the US than in Germany (a consequence of the higher taboo surrounding public nudity). The US porn industry feeds the whole world and is bigger than Hollywood. Abortion regulations are more liberal in the US than in Germany. Most of these freedoms come courtesy of the Supreme Court, which is very powerful and quite liberal on some topics. Indeed, almost all progressive changes in US legislation can be traced back to Supreme Court decisions; legislatures are too scared for bold moves.
Another strange contradiction given the strong religious base is the enthusiastic embrace of exotic reproduction techniques and genetic modification in the US. Research on human embryos and human cloning is legal in the US (but not funded by the federal government) and illegal in Germany, as are rent-a-womb arrangements where a woman carries the fetus of another couple. Sperm banks which sell sperm based on the donor's features also don't exist in Germany.
It is also my impression that the atmosphere at US colleges is more sexually charged (clothing, flirting, partying etc.) than that at German universities. This however could have something to do with the fact that American students are on average a couple of years younger than German ones.
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