From this thread:
Italics are mine.
Can any EuroDopers chime in with their observations? Anyone with some statistics?
Thoughts and feelings?
-Resident MeatBeast
I’m not a Eurodoper or all that knowledgeable about the current theological standpoint of Europe, yet I feel that I have a relevant contribution (heh); I’ve been reading a few articles about their school districts and it seems as though creationism, while still a tiny minority of the population might be on the rise.
Additionally and take this next part with a grain of salt, but I think there education system has set up a system where the parents can put their children in whatever school they want-and that the religious schools (at least some of them) are doing pretty well (and are funded well) so the parents send their children to them, where religion is foisted upon them.
I’m not entirely sure about the above, so don’t quote me…
I can of course only speak for my tiny part of Europe but this is definately not the case here. People keep their religion pretty much to themselves and nowadays most folks only go to church during Christmas, but Christianity is getting stronger here, if anything. The emphasis is changing but belief is not waning. I can probably dig up the most recent survey but it wouldn’t make much sense to you unless I translated it, and I just can’t be bothered.
I was not aware of creationism being so much as mentioned in Europe and sincerely doubt that it is tought in many schools but, then again, people are getting crazier by the minute. Who knows, we might even start playing baseball before too long.
…just kidding. 
The US is vastly more religious than Europe, especially the ‘big three’ of France, Britain and Germany: the Catholic and Orthodox church still holds a lot of sway in the Mediterranean and Eastern states, but even that is waning.
As for the social consequences, well, clearly legislation and election campaigns in general are far more free of its influence as in the US. The church buildings themselves are increasingly being converted to other uses, such as boozers or music venues (with recreation replacing ‘worship’ as a pastime). The ‘community’ aspect is also being replaced (rather than ‘eroded’) by groups with a common interest such as recreational or sports clubs, and technology makes communication ever easier without having to all meet up at the same building.
Not that anyone would for one moment advocate anything to discourage Christianity or church worship, of course: it is perhaps just considered a little old fashioned.
As for creationism, if it is “on the rise” then it does so from almost literally zero. Evolution has been taught in schools exclusively for decades, if not since the 19th century, let alone the 20th. Young Earth Creationism, in particular, is viewed as utter poppycock comparable to the Flat Earthism it is clearly equivalent to.
SentientMeat summed it up rather well. From the perspective of the U.S., most of Europe is probably seen as areligious.
In The Netherlands, the actual hold of christianity on society is marginal. Lots of people are still registered as being christian, but don’t practice, and may, if asked, be much closer to an agnostic or deistic persuasion. There are still fervent christians, but those are generally viewed as a bit sad and locked up in old-fashioned standpoints. The more liberal christian views do not stress God very much; they seem to do not much more than keep the faith among the believers going, and to the outside world do not much more than practice charitable work.
Politically speaking, there is only one major christian party, the Christian Democrats (CDA), who however do not show much of a christian view in their standpoints. The other parties have no affiliation to any religion; some are more or less overt agnostic/atheistic. I don’t believe any politician except one of the christian parties has ever stressed his religiousness in recent years. Religion is mostly considered a private matter.
However, the influence of christianity on society is still considerable. Partly for historical and sentimental reasons, most Dutch would probably still, if pressed, consider society a Christian one. This influence does not in any way translate in a general preference for living according to the Bible.
So I guess from a US point of view we’re wayward agnostics. If the end of christianity means the end of the influence of the Church, we’re already there. If you mean that there are no more christians, that doesn’t seem to happen in the short run, as there are still groups of christians who are still thriving (the Evangelical Broadcasting association (EO) does quite well).
Even without thriving Christian churches, Christianity can still be very widespread… I mean a large number of people who call themselves Christians practically never go to church.
I can confirm what the others said. Germany seem a lot less religious. Personally, I don’t think I know anyone who goes to church - in any generation. This was different 10 years ago when I lived in a small Bavarian village, but in less rural areas it is extremely rare. e.g. My Grandfather is/was a Catholic conservative “Christian Democrat” local politician and lives ca. 100 meters from a Catholic church. However he has no problem with telling everyone that he doesn’t identify with the church, and unless he really has to (marriages and funerals,) he won’t go.
Literalism, even in mild forms, seems a lot less wide-spread. Many people like churches as institutions that do good things or believe in some kind of god but don’t believe in any of the details.
Another difference from the US is that the vast majority of (nominal) christians belongs to just two denominations. Of 82.5 million Germans a bit over 26 million are Roman Catholic and a practically equal number are members of a confederation of protestant state churches (Lutheran/Evangelical/Reformed.) Next are over 3 million muslims. The forth largest group is the New Apostolic Church with 380 000 members. By American standards there is no complete separation of church and state. Members of many denominations pay church taxes, many nominally religious institutions like schools, kindergardens and hospitals are heavily subsidized by the state. Religious education is a regular subject in schools. The teachers are paid by the state, but require a license from their church.
What you say is probably true; I’m only truly aware of one school that teaches it. I think that I remember it ‘spreading’ so-to-speak, but I’m not sure at all.
American Evangelicals could probably take a lesson from Europe’s example, though not in the way they’d probably read it. The US, with its religious freedom and (when it comes down to it, divine invocations in presidential speeches notwithstanding) governmental hands-off attitude toward religion, is easily 10x as strongly religious as most European countries, who almost all had an “official” religion through most of their histories.
Which means this evangelical push for more recognition of our “Christian heritage” in legislation and public life is, to people not blinded by the Light, likely to eventually lead down the path to apathy that Europe is on in regards to religion, not to the perfect Christian society they’re envisioning.
This is what I took out of the quote. Having lived in the VERY fundie MidWest of the US for the majority of my life, this is hard to imagine. Yet living in Seattle for 8 years gave me a small taste of what it might be like. Although I have no cites for demographics, I’d assume from my time spent there that Seattle is one of the least Christian cities per capita. I’ll leave the speculation of this (if it’s correct) in relation to their horrible economy (unless it’s gotten better since I left in the last year) for another debate thread.
Another very interesting topic that I almost started a thread for today, but the topic at hand took preference at the last moment. I’ll open a thread for it in the near future, I’m sure, but I don’t want to be a forum hog.
It seems like it’s actually happening from the majority of the above responses. The fruit of the debate, however, should probably stem from the fact that it’s not getting any press. (In case I lost you in my rantings, that statement would refer to Europe becoming de-Christianized) I consider myself to be at least semi-world-news-saavy, but I’ve had not even the slightest notion that this was going on. So why haven’t people been talking about it that much? (If they have been, please inform me where, and enjoy a good poking at my lack of aforementioned knowledge)
Also, ralph124c, please chime in and give us a notion of what you were implying with the above quote. It’s your baby, after all.
-Resident MeatBeast
Another factor to consider is the large numbers of Islamic immigrants that have been arriving in Europe, that have considerably higher birthrates than the below-replacement levels of native Europeans. If current trends continue, France & several other European nations will be majority Islamic within a century.
The trouble with this logic is that many of these people call themselves Christians while not fulfilling any criteria, such as belief in Heaven, Hell, the virgin birth, miracles, the resurrection, etc. At what point can we start to say “ok, they call themselves Christians, but they’re not”?
Not necessarily. That would happen if birth rates remained at the high levels of recent immigrants, but so far the birth rates of muslims born here dropped more or less to “christian european” levels.
Why should they? It doesn’t really change anything and, at any rate, the biggest countries are still (AFAIK) mostly Christian. Talking about Europe as one big entity here is a little odd, though; Poland and Latvia have very little in common with Switzerland, for example.
That’s an interesting point, UG, and one I shouldn’t have overlooked. I think, being an American, we sometimes even overlook the fact that Mexico and Canada, let alone Greenland, are part of our continent. Europe is a wide spread continent, even though it be small, and it has a lot of countries and islands to consider. Sometimes I forget that Iceland is probably isolated from a lot of what’s going on on the mainland.
-Resident MeatBeast
Why was this not debated more? My impression is that this has been going on for decades, since the sixties (see other thread). In fact, until recently I got the impression that the whole world, and in particular the Western world, was well in its way to secularization during the seventies (this includes countries like Egypt and Iran). However, after that there has been a growth of Christian and Muslim fundamentalism.
So from a European perspective it is more like the U.S. has seen a sudden rebirth of Christianity. I was genuinely surprised to hear that there is a serious debate about letting Creationism being taught in schools. Same with the discussion about that judge who didn’t want to remove a certain statue, or the frequent references to being a good Christian by politicians.
The gradual move to secularism isn’t “the most significant tranformation in modern times”. It is just a gradual,and moderate, social development.
Maybe it’s gone without comment from sociologists, because it is also going without comment from the religious leaders themselves.
Am I wrong? I don’t live in Europe, but I have never heard of , say, the Archibishop of Cantebury publicly calling for the English people to repent and return to their Church. Or Queen Elizabeth lamenting in her annual Christmas message that the public must support the Church of England, which she is the head of.If the highest ranking authorities don’t complain, why should we expect a lot of political/sociological commentary?.
The rise of secular culture to replace --but not endanger --the previous Christian culture is no real problem or challenge to European identity.So nobody commented on it, because everyone is comfortable with it.
True, it would have shocked Henry the VIII or Oliver Cromwell to be told that in the future Europeans would decide not to kill each other over religion. But during the past 80 years, the fading away of Christian religiosity was a gradual and natural development that nobody was worried about.
An issue now is whether today’s secular culture is in danger of being replaced by Muslim culture–and what that will mean to European identity 80 years from now.
And that’s getting a lot of commentary , because people don’t feel so comfortable with it.
I’m no sociologist, but it is my experience that to be sociologically debated, a developent has to be either new (starting) of over (so we can look back). Developents in full progress are too hard to pinpoint. Maybe this is because the sociologists and intellectuals are part of the developement itself. To them, un-churching isn’t yet a social phenomenon; it is still a personal, and slightly fashionable, choice.
A developement has a larger chance of being debated if it is worrisome. Apparently, any purposes an institutionalized church in Holland had, are better served by something else.
As** Tusculan ** remarked, the ‘community’ aspect is being replaced (rather than ‘eroded’) by groups with a common interest such as recreational or sports clubs.
The socio-economic support within the Churches isn’t neccesary because the Dutch have an excellent Social Security system.
People nowadays take their ethics from psychology, science, and the public debate, and the Church is seen as not having too much to contribute.
Many Dutch do consider them selves very much “spiritually interested”. They just don’t think the Church has anything to offer in that regard. Instead, they’re quite happy making their own melange of religion, meditation, personal ethics, philosophy, new-agey activities etc.
So, in short, in Holland, no-one mourns the lessening influence of the Church. If anything, the prevailing sentiment is more like “good riddance”. Not a worrisome developement to be studied, so it isn’t studied.
Simulpost with chappachula!