Posted on 12/26/2006, 9:34:26 PM by shrinkermd
When the "corporate prayer" movement first started in 1996, few people in Holland took any notice. Why should they have done so? After all, Holland's manifest destiny was to become a fully secularized country, in which prayer was considered at best an irrational but harmless pastime. That was then. Cue forward to 2006, when prayer in the workplace is fast becoming a universally accepted phenomenon. More than 100 companies participate...
...The idea that secularization is the irreversible wave of the future is still the conventional wisdom in intellectual circles here. They would be bemused, to say the least, at a Dutch relapse into religiosity. But as the authors of a recently published study called De Toekomst van God (The Future of God) point out, organized prayer in the workplace is just one among several pieces of evidence suggesting that Holland is on the threshold of a new era--one we might call the age of "post-secularization." In their book, Adjiedj Bakas, a professional trend-watcher, and Minne Buwalda, a journalist, argue that Holland is experiencing a fundamental shift in religious orientation
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
"...In spite of this decline of the old religious establishment, however, the century-long wave of secularization seems to have crested, and may even have begun to recede. The Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) finds that the number of self-described Christians stopped declining as early as the beginning of the 1990s. Among the under-20s, the number has started to increase in recent years. If the CBS figures are to be believed, in 2005 a small majority of the Dutch population (52 percent) still called itself Christian. The figures are disputed, however, by another major government research body, the Social and Cultural Planning Agency (SCP). The SCP uses a stricter definition of religiosity, allowing only those who not only describe themselves as Christians but also belong to a particular church to be counted as "real" Christians. The others, the so-called "fringe Christians," are not attached to a particular church and are excluded from the official head count. Even by the SCP's strict standards, Christians still form a 40 percent plurality among the wider population. Much like the CBS statistic, the SCP's 40 percent figure hasn't changed since the early 1990s.
All I can say is I thank God all the time that my ancestors immigrated legally from Holland long ago.
In general, I think there is a big difference between the post-Christian modernist European and the Atheist Russian/Chinese. There is also a big difference between the post-Christian modernist European and the Islamic fanatic. Which may turn into another movement, the center-right “philosophical” Christian European intellectual. However, if this is the case, birth rates will be even lower.
I love Holland and the Dutch. I pray they can revive their faith and save their great nation.
Many are praying that very same prayer along with you.
In essence what we are seeing is the failure of one religion - secular multiculturalism - in the face of a challenge by another - Islam. People facing that challenge are resorting to an older, stronger faith that does not tell its believers that they must put up with the threat of random violence in their cities and the rape and intimidation of their women, all in pursuit of that weird progressive dictum that only helpless victims are morally pure. That's a sort of purity that most of us can do without.
ping
Perhaps the article leading the thread is of interest...
The key demographic will be the results of the "battle of the bedroom". At the moment, the Muslim immigrant families are producing children at high rates and the indigenous population is not even replacing itself. Unless this reverses rather quickly, unlikely but possible, Islamic Europe is a foregone conclusion.
wow!
Will read it tomorrow at work, nothing to do there at the moment. Thanks for the ping.
This may interest you.
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