Europe Forsakes Christianity for Islam?

CBN News ^ | 2/16/2006 | Dale Hurd

[itsinthebag]

CBN.com – Welcome to post-Christian Europe, a land filled with beautiful monuments to an ancient religion that few Europeans practice anymore or know much about.

While Christianity is still very relevant in the United States, and is exploding in the developing world, Europe today has sunk below unbelief, and is now labeled "Christophobic" and "anti-religious."

While an American might look at a church building and think nice thoughts, that's rarely the case with a European, especially here in France, where religion is more likely to be associated with oppression, irrelevance, or simply the past.

In France, as in much of Europe, only five percent go to church on a weekly basis, and most of them are the elderly. Only 10 percent think religion is "very important." For all Europeans, that figure is only 21 percent.

[Stepan12]

Welcome to post Christian Europe. First Nazism, now Islam -- it's more primitive and energetic cousin.

[madprof98]

But some would say Europe has a new religion. Italy's Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione, a devout Catholic, calls it "a nihilistic fundamentalism against truth." Stark calls it hedonism, and says it is why Europe is dying. No Western European country is having enough babies to replace its current population.

“The loss of faith in Europe is like an unseen black star that still has a tremendous gravitational pull,” Miniter said. “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.”

Want to see what America will look like if we go the way of Europe? It's not necessary to travel abroad. Just visit San Francisco.

[maestro]

Europe Forsakes Christianity for Islam?

Nonsense!

Europe Forsakes Christianity for British-Darwinist-Socialistic-Evolution....and Oil Monopolies!

[NYer]

the rest of the article .....

As an American in Europe, when you tell Europeans that you go to church on Sunday, they look at you like a museum piece--something strange,” said journalist Richard Miniter.

Near Brussels, at Christian Center, an Assemblies of God church, Belgian Pastor Paul Devos ministers to a culture in which Christianity is largely irrelevant.

“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 we do not expect anything from religion apart from some very abstract hope that there is something after this life,” Devos said.

Among the clergy in the state churches, unbelief is extraordinarily high.

Baylor Sociologist Rodney Stark said, “It's easy to have a negative religious experience going to church in Europe. The one place unbelief is rampant is in the churches.”

The study "Fragmented Faith?" found that in Britain, one out of five Anglican pastors does not believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ. And only 60 percent believe in the virgin birth--that's a lower level of belief than among churchgoers.

“It's the churches they don't go to. And one of the reasons is [that] they don't go is the people running them don't care if they don't go,” Stark explained.

There have been reports recently that although church attendance in Europe is low, belief in God is actually very high, but belief in what sort of God?  Judging from surveys, it's a new age faith with a large dose of moral relativism.

Vince Esterman, a Frenchman who grew up in Australia, has been a French pastor for almost 20 years, and has a dynamic street ministry in Paris. Although he has led a lot of Frenchmen to Christ, he doesn't talk much about revival. He speaks of a Europe that is still moving away from God.

“Europe that was the custodian of the gospel in the very early decades now is the continent that is rejecting the gospel and Christianity,” Esterman said. “And so we have seen France go into decline and with it, Europe generally.”

But instead of looking to faith for answers, the European media continue to mock America's high church attendance as weird. The British Economist Magazine wrote, "To Europeans, religion is the strangest and most disturbing feature about (America).”

Esterman said, “This last week in prime time television on one of the French national stations they had a program on God in America. And again it was Pentecostal Christians in the states, and they were ridiculed and treated as a simple minded naive people. But absolutely nothing can be said against Muslims of course because there's always retaliation.”

Stark wrote in the Victory of Reason that Europe owes everything--its culture, its freedom, its science, and its wealth--to Christianity. But European leaders today are defiant in their efforts to keep God and Christian faith out of public life.

A sociologist at the Sorbonne in Paris summed it up this way: "We are not going to sacrifice women's equality, democracy, and individual freedoms on the altar of a new religion,” said Patrick Weil, University of Paris-Sorbonne, Christian Science Monitor.

But some would say Europe has a new religion. Italy's Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione, a devout Catholic, calls it "a nihilistic fundamentalism against truth." Stark calls it hedonism, and says it is why Europe is dying. No Western European country is having enough babies to replace its current population.

“The loss of faith in Europe is like an unseen black star that still has a tremendous gravitational pull,” Miniter said. “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.”
 
One writer described Europe today as a majority of Christian atheists and a minority of Muslim fanatics--an exaggeration. But there is a spiritual void on the continent that Islam waits to fill. It was this void in the life of a Belgian woman, a former drug addict named Muriel DeGauque that caused her to convert to Islam, go to Iraq, and blow herself up trying to kill U.S. troops.

“I have been an eyewitness to France becoming increasingly Islamicized. There is no longer an ability to morally resist a strong culture like Islam coming into the country,” Esterman said.

Stark said, “Europe is going to get more religious than it is either because of a revival of Christianity or because they go Muslim…you can't sit there with no babies for ever.”

And because belief impacts everything from culture, to economics, to the war on terror, religious America and anti-religious Europe are likely to drift farther apart unless Europe returns to God. 

Catholic Ping - Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list

[alloysteel]

Europeans shall not be any better as Muslims than they were as Christians. In fact, at most only a small number shall take up the burden of converting to Islam, while most will be perfectly happy to take the second-class status as Dhimmi. Little more than serfs, with fewer freedoms than they had under feudalism.

[proxy_user]

No description of economy. Can Muslims design and build the AirBus, and keep Porsche and Mercedes up there with the Japanese models?

[adorno]

Europe Forsakes Christianity for Islam?

They're just going back to their Neanderthal roots.

[ChristianDefender]

Europe is on its way back to Dark Ages... or worst Stone Age..

[Stepan12]

Europe Forsakes Christianity for Islam? Nonsense! Europe Forsakes Christianity for British-Darwinist-Socialistic-Evolution....and Oil Monopolies!

[adorno]

Can Muslims design and build the AirBus, and keep Porsche and Mercedes up there with the Japanese models?

Hey, maybe there is something positive in this for America: less competition.

[Siena Dreaming]

The study "Fragmented Faith?" found that in Britain, one out of five Anglican pastors does not believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ

That means that 80% of pastors believe in the resurrection?

Hmmm....actually I find that quite high. Maybe it's not as bad in Britain as I thought.

France, I'm sure, is a different story.

[ClaireSolt]

It is just totalitarianism. The state controls the media and owns the churches which it neuters by making clerics employees of the state. It also controls education. It brooks no competition in its grasp for total control and power. I wish pope Benedict would reclaim the churches and clergy and make them stand on their own feet. Then they would have to care about their flocks or not eat.

[NCC-1701]

Someone on another thread called Islam the New Communism. I can see that. There is a difference. With the Nazis, you knew where they were and their leaders were defined. Same with Stalin, Kruschev, and the rest. They were in control of a defined country with known boundaries. We could, and did, go in and defeated them. With the Soviet Union, we didn't go in there, but we set up the conditions that hastened their demise. With Islam, they have nothing to call their own. No country, no science, art, sports, and anything else the rest of the world can lay claim to.
Islam is a disease that needs to be dealt with and dealt with severely. They are the modern day kamakazies that will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. WE MUST NOT ALLOW THAT TO HAPPEN! We defeated the Nazis and the communists. We must treat Islam them same way. What is going on in Iraq is the opening salvo of what is going to be a long, protracted battle for survival. WE HAVE TO WIN THAT WAR!

[MARKUSPRIME]

If the biblical prophecy is true then the anti-christ supposed to come from the revived roman empire(the EU). In the near future the EU will join with Russia,China, and the islamic world against the United States and Israel.

[NCC-1701]

HBO ran a show about the writings of Nostradamus. At the end, it was shown that the Final War would be started by someone in the area of the Middle East/Iraq-Iran. I didn't put much stock in it at the time but with what's going on now, who knows. In retrospect, it all seems plausible.

[xJones]

But there is a spiritual void on the continent that Islam waits to fill.

IIRC, it was C.S. Lewis that said there was a God-shaped hole in every human. And if it wasn't filled with the God of the Bible, it would be filled with something else. Man must worship something.

[A CA Guy]

I think Islam is a cult, so all of Europe is going pagan.