Europe Forsakes Christianity for Islam?
By Dale Hurd
CBN News Sr. Reporter
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 he re 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.
"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 la rge
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 k ill 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.
Those who kneel before G-d can stand before anyone! Please daven for the
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__________________
"Blessed is He who Comes in The Name of The Lord"
EUROPE FORSAKES CHRISTIANITY FOR ISLAM ?
