As long as the secular liberal minority does not prevail, it looks like America will be the only hope left for Western Christendom.
Contribute your opinions on this sad news. Also, offer some options on how Western Christianity can be invigorated.
http://www.cbn.com/CBNNews/News/040301a.asp
Is Europe the New 'Dark Continent'?
CBN.com — (CBN News) - When the Gospel went forth from Jerusalem, one of the places it took root was Europe. And Europe became a center of Christian civilization for more than 1,000 years. But there are signs that Europe's Christian era has come to an end.
A big deal was made of the fact that the first draft of the new European Union Constitution did not include a single mention of God. But most Europeans act as if the Christian God of history no longer exists. Although Europeans say they believe in some type of 'God,' church attendance in most European countries is less than five percent.
Less than half of the British public can name any of the four New Testament Gospels. Almost a third of all Dutch no longer know why we have Christmas day.
There is a new 'dark continent'—the land that used to be known as Christian Europe. Today, many of its cathedrals are simply large museum pieces. They are 'artifacts of an ancient religion, and a dead faith.'
Jessica Elgood is an analyst at the British research firm, MORI. She said, "Our polling shows that large proportions of the British public still believe in God — concepts of a Christian God. But very few actually practice that faith through 'an organized religion.'"
She continued, "Only three percent of the public regularly attend church. And of those three percent, half of those are black—black Britons—who only make up about five percent of the population."
Richard Miniter lives in Brussels and is a correspondent for The London Sunday Times. He said, "When, as an American in Europe, you tell Europeans that you go to church on Sunday, they look at you like a museum piece—something strange."
Miniter also said, "There are more practicing Muslims in France than there are baptized Catholics. Out of a nation of more than 60 million Frenchmen, less than four million are baptized Catholics. A generation ago, that just wouldn't have been so."
Near Brussels, at Christian Center, an Assemblies of God church, Belgian Pastor Paul Devos preaches to a culture that no longer believes Christian faith is the answer to anything.
Devos said, "In the United States, people would more quickly turn toward, at least Christ, in general, and Christianity, because it's still somewhat part of the culture, in general. Here in Europe, we have gone beyond that point, and people do not expect anything from religion, apart from some very abstract hope that there is something after this life. [They think] for this life, there is no hope to be found in the church."
Reverend Alan Baker is an American pastor at Christian Center. He said, "Something I hear a lot is an 'ancient spirit of hopelessness.'"
Baker added, "I've had people tell me, when they come off the plane getting into Belgium, it's as if there are spiritual hands around their throat. They just can't seem to breathe. It's a very heavy, heavy thing, a hopelessness."
It's not just a feeling. While most Americans say they are hopeful about the future, most Europeans in this poll admitted they are literally hopeless.
A poll conducted in 2002 found that while 61 percent of Americans had hope for the future, only 42 percent of U.K. residents had that hope. On the European continent it was even worse, with only 29 percent of the French saying they have hope for the future, and only 15 percent of Germans.
Miniter said, "The loss of faith, in Europe, is like an 'unseen black star' that still has a tremendous gravitational pull. They don't understand why their culture is failing. They don't understand why divorce rates and suicide rates are so high. They don't understand why so few European women have more than one child, and why on most European streets, you see more dogs than children. This is the impact of the death of real Christian belief in Europe."
Yet the European media never tires of mocking America's high church attendance as "something weird," or portraying President Bush's faith as a "weapon of mass destruction."
In a typical comment, written in the Sunday Herald, the writer says President Bush is "under the influence of the crackpot TV evangelism that is so peculiar to America."
European elites are especially worried that Bush prays a lot.
A writer for Britain's The Economist magazine wrote, "To Europeans, religion is the strangest and most disturbing feature about [America]."
European elites worry that "fundamentalists" are "hijacking" the country. They find it extraordinary that three times as many Americans believe in the virgin birth as in evolution.
Elgood said, "I actually think we don't understand it [American Christianity] at all, and it's one of these gaps between our cultures, that actually leaves us scratching our heads at each other. We don't understand it. It hasn't been a part of our life here for 40 years."
When Elgood's firm asked the British to name an 'inspirational' figure, Jesus finished at the bottom.
The Mori poll found that 65 percent of Britons named Nelson Mandela, 14 percent picked Prime Minister Tony Blair, 10 percent said 'none of the above', and six percent said Britney Spears. Astonishingly, only one percent named Jesus Christ as an inspirational figure.
Religion is an especially dirty word in European politics; many European leaders are atheists.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is not one of them, but during the Iraq war, when Blair wanted to end a televised address to the nation with the words "God Bless You," his aides talked him out of it.
Some analysts say religious differences between America and Europe are reaching the point of driving the two continents apart.
But could Europe be poised for revival?
A licensed Christian broadcaster in the U.K. at Premier Radio, Managing Director Peter Kerridge believes the demise of the church in Europe has been greatly exaggerated.
Kerridge said, "It doesn't matter how many Times headlines there are, saying the church is dead. The truth is, the church will never die."
Kerridge added, "We are seeing some decline, in some branches of the established church and huge growth in other areas of the church.
In London, the black Pentecostal church is exploding. Huge growth. And one of the hopes for the church in the UK is the re-evangelization of England by ethnic minorities. "
But in Europe, evangelization can be tough going.
Devos said, "What I always tell the congregation, our congregation, is that if we want to reach out, it has to go through personal contacts. We cannot go ringing doorbells and going from home to home trying to reach them, because they do not trust us."
Pastor Baker says the hopelessness of many Europeans can be seen in a conversation he had with a successful Belgian businessman.
Baker said, "[The businessman] was trembling, with tears in his eyes, and he said to me—literally face to face—'Now pastor, if you believe the Bible is God's word, if you believe it's the message of life and hope, give me one reason, today -- give me one reason to go on living. If you can't do it, I'm taking my life right now. I can't take it anymore!' Then he says, 'Don't look at me that way. There's nothing wrong with me. It's not just me, it's my wife, it's my children, it's all our friends—we have nothing to live for'—it's all across my nation!"
Though the church buildings still remain, European secularists assumed that Modernism would do away with religion. But secularism has created a spiritual void, a vacuum in Europe that beckons faith to return.
There is a real worry that if Europe tires of this spiritual chaos, then the religion they will turn to is Islam. Islam is the fastest growing religion in Europe.
http://www.catholicity.com/mccloskey/ar ... sited.html
Europe Revisited - and America Reconsidered
Europe is gradually becoming what it has not been since its origin: a small, perhaps insignificant continent with a severely shrinking population that has lost its Christian roots and consciousness and may find its dominant religion and population Islamic — Eurabia, as it is being named by some pundits.
The almost thousand-year war that began in 711 with the Muslim invasion of Spain appeared conclusively won in 1683 with the turning back of the Turkish invasion at Vienna. Now, it appears not to have been "won" after all. The European community soon may open its door to Turkey, which upon its entry would become its most populous member. What Islam could not achieve through centuries of war, it is now achieving through immigration — by taking on the low-paying jobs that the affluent and increasingly childless Europeans can't fill.
A far-below-replacement birthrate is pandemic throughout Europe. Two of the nominally most Catholic countries, Spain and Italy, hover above the rate of one child per couple. London's St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, two ancient monuments of British Christianity, now serve principally as large museums and mausoleums where crowds of tourists visit the tombs of Wellington or Nelson and the Poet's Corner.
Fewer than 2% of members of the Anglican Church go to church on Sunday, making Roman Catholicism the de facto Christian religion of the country — without benefit of government sponsorship. So much for the English Reformation.
Even more telling is a visit to the St. Denis Basilica in Paris, the site of a Gallo-Roman cemetery where the saint was buried. From the year 250, it has been the burial home of 42 kings, 32 queens and 63 princes and princesses of France. One of the architectural jewels of Europe, it survived the ravages of the French Revolution. But now, the Christian shrine lies surrounded by a populous, high-crime area of non-assimilated Muslims. Living in the same godless culture as Christians, they seem to have grown just as non-observant in their own religious practice.
From what I have seen, like the United States, although to a greater extent, present-day Europe above all worships at the altar of sport. Athletes are the celebrities whose wax effigies are popular at Madame Tussaud's Museum just down the road from where I write.
With the influx of Islamic workers and the low rates of fertility (with little sign or possibility of reversal), within a few decades, Europe will be radically changed both in its religious and racial makeup.
John Paul II summed it up:
"At the root of this loss of hope is an attempt to promote a vision of man apart from God and apart from Christ. This sort of thinking has led to man being considered as 'the absolute center of reality which makes him occupy — falsely — the place of God and which forgets that it is not man who creates God, but rather God who creates man. Forgetfulness of God led to the abandonment of man.' It is therefore no wonder that in this context a vast field has opened for the unrestrained development of nihilism in philosophy, of relativism in values and morality, and of pragmatism — and even cynical hedonism — in daily life. European culture gives the impression of 'silent apostasy' on the part of people who have all that they need and who live as if God does not exist."
If present-day Europe has been eviscerated, blame its lack of faith. What went wrong? The currents of the Reformation, with the principle of private judgment, and of the Enlightenment, with its over-reliance on agnostic reason, added to the historical crisis in the Church caused in part by the badly interpreted applications of the Second Vatican Council. The result is that Europe may soon become a largely Islamic continent — Eurabia — or an intolerant, consumerist, welfare state
So, what's next for Christianity?
The European community's recent treatment of Italian Catholic statesman and philosopher Rocco Buttiglione may give us a clue. He simply espoused traditional Christian moral views on homosexuality. That was sufficient to have him removed as a candidate for an important European post.
The spiritual illness of Europe may be terminal — but death is not the end. This would not be the first time a great swath of Christendom came to ruin. After all, the Middle East, Asia Minor and Northern Africa were once flourishing centers of Christianity. Indeed, with the increasing hemorrhage of Christians from an intolerant and war-stricken Middle East, soon there may be virtually no Christians at all in the Holy Land where Christianity was founded.
In his book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Philip Jenkins reminds us: "The story of Christianity has been inextricably bound up with that of Europe and European-derived civilizations overseas, above all in North America.
"It seems that the growing secularization of the West can only mean that Christianity is in its dying days. Globally, the faith of the future must be Islam. Over the past century, however, the center of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably southward, to Africa, Asia and Latin America."
Christianity is far from dead in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Jenkins points to the "hundreds of millions" of Pentecostal and independent churches there — churches, he says, that "preach deep personal faith and communal orthodoxy, mysticism and Puritanism," all founded on "clear Scriptural authority." In fact, Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere, whether Protestant or Catholic, is, above all, traditional.
Jenkins believes Christianity, both in its Catholic and Protestant forms, will continue to be the largest world religion for decades to come.
Yes, Europe has changed — and we too in America are undergoing equally dramatic and similar changes. As Americans, we must ask ourselves where we will be in 50 years. Will we be in a highly secularized consumer society with an ever-lower birth rate (we are already at the lowest in our history, barely above replacement level — 2.1%), dependent on immigration for survival like Europe, or a vibrant, growing, religion-based society that cherishes life and freedom and the dignity of the human person?
The current societal, cultural and political conflicts that we are engaged in will tell the tale. It is our choice to make with God's grace and in his providence.
All Christians need to possess the virtue of hope in order to enter heaven.
Through the centuries, the Church has been in what appears to be similar perilous situations. It is not dependent on geographical location to survive or even thrive. Its continued growth through procreation and evangelization give much hope for hope and even a realistic optimism.
If indeed, it is darkest before dawn, God may be preparing us and our descendants for what John Paul II has referred to as a "new springtime for the Church." In speaking to Europe, he also speaks to us in America: "Be confident! In the Gospel which is Jesus, you will find the sure and lasting hope to which you aspire. This hope is grounded in the victory of Christ over sin and death. He wishes this victory to be your own, for your salvation and your joy.
"Be certain! The Gospel of hope does not disappoint! Throughout the vicissitudes of your history, yesterday and today, it is the light which illumines and directs your way; it is the strength which sustains you in trials; it is the prophecy of a new world; it is the sign of a new beginning; it is the invitation to everyone to blaze new trails in order to make the continent a true common home filled with the joy of life."
Perhaps one of the most silent and yet startling forces in Christian mission today is the "marginalization" of the Western missionary. Christianity is exploding in virulent forms all over the globe, but most particularly in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In tomorrow's world, more than three quarters of living Christians will reside in one of these regions.
However, the point is not the cause, but the effect. In tomorrow's world, the Western missionary--though no doubt still present--will be vastly outnumbered by his Third-World counterpart.
Decline of Western Christianity
Maybe God wants to allow the developing world to experience his miracles and grace more, because the West has been privileged enough but is now being ungrateful.Dan wrote:The church ins the West can be restored, but only if God wills it. If His will is that Europe turns it's back on Him, He will not let us restore the church. If it is His will, it will be possible, but only with hard work and determination.
