LONDON — Why is American democracy in much better health than its European counterpart? The widely-noted excitement generated by the Democratic primaries shows no sign of abating, now that the presidential campaign proper is underway, and 2008 promises to be an even more colorful contest than those of 2000 or 2004, both of which were hard-fought and close-run. The minority view, that President Bush’s victories were illegitimate or that the system was fatally flawed, never prevailed.

In Europe, by contrast, the attitude toward democracy is sour and cynical. True, this attitude is usually applied to the West in general, including America, with critics pointing to low voter turnout to bolster their belief that Americans are just as disaffected from politics as Europeans. The source of their cynicism about democracy, though, is not America but Europe — for it is the European, not the American, Union that has a fundamental antipathy toward the will of its own peoples.

Two weeks ago in this column I discussed the Irish referendum, which has overturned the Treaty of Lisbon and with it the latest attempt by the European political class to expropriate what is left of the sovereignty of the nation states. Since then, the French — who have assumed the rotating presidency of the European Union for the next six months — have in effect ordered the Irish to go away and come back with the right answer. This is what happened in 2001, when the Irish rejected the Treaty of Nice, as well as to the Danes when they rejected the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.

This time, however, the Czechs and Poles have come to the aid of the Irish. The Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, already had declared the Lisbon Treaty dead, while President Kaczynski of Poland has now announced that signing the treaty, which his parliament has already ratified, would be “pointless” as long as the Irish referendum stands.

So the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, now has his work cut out to persuade his fellow heads of state that the Treaty of Lisbon is so important that it warrants overruling the democratic wishes of smaller nations.

All this has set me thinking about what the roots of democracy really are. Perhaps the most striking difference between Europe and America today is that Americans are much more likely to be actively religious.

I came across a suggestive text by one of the greatest empirical students of democracy who has ever lived: Alexis de Tocqueville. Religion, he wrote, “is more needed in democratic republics than in any others. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?”

If the symbiosis of faith and democracy in America was evident, even in Tocqueville’s time, how much more true it is today. But one is also struck by his sombre words about the “destruction” of society if morality is not strengthened to compensate for a more liberal political system. If anything, Europe has moved in the opposite direction.

The European Union has abandoned the Christian morality and adopted an aggressive secularism — one reason why the French and Dutch rejected the constitution in their referendums three years ago. But at the same time the European Union has become even less democratic, by centralizing its judiciary, legislature, and executive.

Tocqueville was a Catholic, whose view of human nature tended toward an Augustinian pessimism; for him, original sin was the key to the human condition. But you do not need to share his outlook to agree that there is an element of hubris in societies that acknowledge no moral authority beyond themselves.

Americans pledge allegiance to “one nation under God” and they mean it. In Britain, we do not swear allegiance to anything, but the sovereign does so on behalf of her subjects at the coronation, when she makes solemn vows to serve God and her countrymen and women. But the European Union rigorously excludes even the vaguest reference to Providence from its documents.

Secular Europe, especially the former Marxist Left, caricatures the Catholic Church as an authoritarian, reactionary, anti-democratic force. But the Church played a decisive part in helping the Poles to break the back of the evil empire, thereby striking the greatest blow for democracy in recent times. Participation in politics is a means to an end for most people; it is only the minority of political activists who deplore the decline in membership of parties or other organizations.

But churches, synagogues, and other religious groups have no difficulty attracting volunteers because their activities, however mundane, ultimately serve a higher purpose. Politics, even democratic politics, must never take the place of religion.

Humanity has paid a high enough price for the political religions of Nazism and Communism without any new cults to take their place. When, for example, the high priest of global warming, Al Gore, seeks to invest his ideology with an aura of “ethical” superiority, he is simply trying to evade legitimate critical scrutiny.

America is the best proof that Tocqueville was right: religion is beneficial — indeed essential — for democracy to flourish. But they are plain different things.

Though the symbiosis of faith and politics is wholly benign, even in America it is best to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.

Mr. Johnson is the editor of Standpoint magazine.