What happened to Christianity in Europe? It’s a question we’ve discussed here a few times in the past. It’s of course a major exaggeration to say that the church in Europe is dead. But there’s no denying that Europe is less culturally religious than the U.S., and nobody seems to know exactly why.
In the wake of recent political discussions about the neverending church-and-state debate, several bloggers are discussing the possible reasons behind this religious discrepency. Matthew Yglesias argues that Europe’s secularism can’t be blamed on a lack of religious presence in public life:
For whatever you may say about Europe’s relative lack of religiosity, it’s not a lack of entanglement of religion in public life that led to it.In the United Kingdom… there is, after all, an established church. And so it goes across northern Europe where each country traditionally had its own established Protestant church. And then across southern Europe, the Catholic Church always had official or quasi-official status. There was no question of pushing the church out of the public square. It’s just that many people… wound up turning their backs on the church. This development most likely seems specifically related to the undue public-ification of religion in Europe. American religious groups, by contrast, have traditionally had to compete in a market of sorts for congregants. A church nobody wants to attend winds up shutting down, a popular church grows. Consequently, people have found ways to keep bringing people into the pews.
Elsewhere, Ross Douthat agrees to a point, but doesn’t think that lack of competition between churches fully explains Europe’s secular culture:
This point of view – that market competition is good for religious faith – has become the conventional wisdom nowadays. That doesn’t make it wrong: America’s most successful churches do behave a lot like successful corporations, and its most successful pastors like successful CEOs and pitchmen. I’m more convinced, though, that our free market in religion explains faith’s success in America than that its supposed absence explains faith’s eclipse in Europe. America, after all, doesn’t just have a free market; it has a free-market culture, where people are used to be treated like consumers and thinking like consumers in almost every walk of life. The social geography of American life, in particular – car culture, suburbanization, and big-box stores – habituates people to constant mobility and competition, and thus makes the idea of church-shopping a natural fit in a way that isn’t necessarily the case in Europe.
Douthat goes on to offer some interesting thoughts about the effect of the World Wars on European religious life and the difficulty of pinning down a convincing reason for the cultural shift away from religion.
What’s your reaction to these posts? In particular, what do you think about the central question being debated: does religious competition explain the highly religious U.S., and does lack of religious competition explain the much less religious Europe? Reading these posts, the one thing I am sure of is that the reasons are a lot more complicated than you’re likely to hear in soundbytes from either side of the great “Culture War” debate here in the U.S.
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December 18, 2007 at 18:54
One of the excerpts points out the UK has an established church. If you look at history, this is precisely why the Pilgrims and others came to the New World – to escape religious persecution.
To equate religion in public life with the establishment of a particular denomination as the official religion is incorrect. Such establishment is not and never has been the aim of those who fight to keep their religious freedom in this nation.
Our Constitution prohibits establishment of a particular denomination. Where religion is recognized as part of the fabric of a nation yet all are free to express their faith, the Gospel flourishes. Europe has chosen an oppressive path. As a result, those with a relationship with Jesus Christ are marginalized and persecuted for following Him.
Also, what is your definition of “church.” Is it the religious institution housed in a building or a living organism, the Body of Christ. People are the church, not an organization. If all you have is religiosity without relationship, there is no attraction or life to draw the unbeliever.
December 19, 2007 at 06:25
There actually has been a ton of research in this area already, and a couple of books worth reading. The consensus in sociology seems to be that increased religious options contributes to an overall greater religious participation.
The logic is, when you think about it, kind of simple.
A church is not a place to find out whether or not God exists or who he is – at least, since he is not present in the building, nobody would think to go looking for Him there. Nobody goes looking for the ‘truth’ in a religious community, and so one ‘truth’ isn’t compared with another in choosing among churches – the quality of a church’s ‘God’ isn’t up for debate when church- or religion-shopping.
The theory I’m talking about is called Rational Choice theory, and basically describes religion in society as a set of competing firms (churches) marketing a religious product (a type of community life, an ordered belief structure) to a series of niches and market categories (‘seeker-senitives’, Mennonites, Catholics) that are established out of people of different types (as they desire a low, medium or high tension religious life), who exchange ‘religious capital’ (their participation and ‘faithfulness’ to the community and it’s ideals) in exchange for that product.
So, like any other marketplace, the more options, the better, and competition rules the field: some churches stick it out by offering a range of lifestyles under one roof (Catholicism), some seem like they are more popular than they are (Evangelicalism), and many religious products are eventually discontinued when their firms go out of business completely (Congregationalism…), effectively closing the doors on a whole ‘way to believe’, as there no longer exists a community to sustain faith or accept contributions.
The idea is that every church offers religion to a believer looking for a ‘suitable’ church for her: the person desiring a high-tension faith might become a Pentacostal, and one desiring a lower-tension faith might become a Unitarian. In the absence of a lower-tension option, our potential Unitarian would not have a church to attend at all, and so, they probably would not go.
That, in a nutshell, is why religious competition is Good, and why pluralism has been very healthy in America.
As America becomes a less-plural society and our faith becomes genre-fied (Christian music, ‘designer’ sermons, interfaith youth events, the “Blue Like Jazz” phenomenon in general) and doctrinal differences between Protestant churches, especially, dissolve or seem to lose meaning, and worship becomes more and more homogenous from church to church, is it any wonder that many people who leave Christianity today feel like they’ve “seen it all” and made a sensible decision to give up believing and do something else with their time?
A couple of books on this, sorry I forgot the names of the authors:
Rational Choice Theory and Religion
The History of Christianity in America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in our Religious Economy
American Catholic
December 19, 2007 at 09:15
I don’t entirely agree with Ladhood. While I think the theory sounds nice, I don’t think it correctly or practically describes what’s going on.
It seems like you’re saying, because there are so many choices, there are so many churches.—> b/c there are so many choices, there are so many choices.
Furthermore, you’re taking the authenticity of the faith entirely out of the equation. Europe is more pluralistic than America, and their faith tradition is characterized by irrelevance and in-authenticity.
The “churches” and their pluralistic, non bible reading/believing leaders have died because they’re not relevant to people, and they don’t communicate the real hope of Christianity.
CS Lewis talked about this trend in Europe decades ago.
December 19, 2007 at 09:43
Ladhood, thanks for the book recommendations. I’ll look for ‘em next time I’m at the library.
December 27, 2007 at 17:34
It doesn’t take volumes of sociology to figure this out—Alexis de Toqueville got it from the mouth of American pastors of all denominations in the 1830s. James Madison laid it out in his Remonstrance for Religious Liberty. Where church and state are closely intertwined, religion is degraded. The separation of church and state in this nation is precisely why spiritual revivals have flourished here. The association of church with government policy and funding in Europe is precisely why people have drifted away. Europe may have descended into a tired sort of pluralism lately, but historically every nation demanded conformity—people used to be hung for denying the Trinity.