Yeah, I’ve been to England, etc. We lived in Europe in 1996 (Maastricht, The Netherlands) when I worked at Medtronic and had an expatriate assignment. My son’s first words were Dutch.
I know that Europeans don’t practice their religion to the extent that we do here in the U.S. My point was that official involvement of Christianity in government life — and that’s what England, Norway, and Denmark have — is not the death knell for left wingers and ‘forward’ thinkers. Far from it.
Just as in the U.S., there are great differences within the countries. To me, Amsterdam was akin to Los Angeles/Las Vegas, Maastricht was slow, conservative, family-oriented. In fact, it was amazing how family friendly The Netherlands was, compared to California. Motherhood was venerated, it seemed. Very different, and very nice.