Reply #20: area isn't interesting, percentage of rural communities is

[tocqueville]

before the industrial revolution most western countries were rural to 80%-90%, with the exception of Britain that was industrialized a bit earlier. So I don't think the answer is there.

I posted earlier :

1) a foundation of the country by religious sects
2) a revolution where liberation from Church played a minor role thus unclear laws of separation
3) lack of a strong socialist - labor movement leaving place to church based charity instead of secular solidarity systems.

A country like Sweden is a very good example of the third statement and church plays there a minor role even if there is no formal state-church separation.

France - extremely rural - had an anticlerical revolution, laws back to 1882 that separated Church and State (for example forbidding any legal value to a marriage only performed by a priest, banning religion teaching from scholls etc..) and of course a very strong labour movement.

Italy is interesting too : the very active LEGAL communist influence already in the 50s counteracted the Vatican.

Spain after Franco had a long secular anti-church quiet revolution...