Niall Ferguson has written an interesting essay on the decline of the Christian faith in Europe:
Now it is Europeans who are the heathens. According to the Gallup Millennium Survey of religious attitudes, barely 20 percent of West Europeans attend church services at least once a week, compared with 47 percent of North Americans and 82 percent of West Africans. Fewer than half of West Europeans say God is a "very important" part of their lives, as against 83 percent of Americans and virtually all West Africans. And fully 15 percent of West Europeans deny that there is any kind of "spirit, God or life force" -- seven times the American figure and 15 times the West African.
The exceptionally low level of British religiosity was perhaps the most striking revelation of a recent ICM poll. One in five Britons claim to "attend an organized religious service regularly," less than half the American figure. Little more than a quarter say that they pray regularly, compared with two-thirds of Americans and 95 percent of Nigerians. And barely one in 10 Britons would be willing to die for our God or our beliefs, compared with 71 percent of Americans.
Christianity is a particular historical phenomenon. And it's true that parts of the world are trending less religious. Liberal democracy and a commitment to pluralism treat religion and matters of personal conscience as private matters and thus, discourage their political use. By treating religious matters as apolitical, the open society - primarily through benign neglect - ultimately drifts toward the secular (at least in its institutions).
Similarly, and for a variety of historical reasons having to do with its experience with wars and its religious beginnings, it should not be surprising that North America remains, by and large, a Christian continent, though it has certainly become more secular over time; nor is it surprising that Africa has begun its initial embrace of Christianity. In fact, in an odd historical parallel to Europe and America, as Africa has begun developing its economy and fashioning its entrance onto the world stage, many parts of the continent have embraced particularly fundamental and violent forms of evangelical Christianity. Those will likely decline over the long haul as their societies become more tolerant and diverse.
But Ferguson's concerns mirror the same old concerns that theologians and moralists have expressed for years - the idea that a increasingly secular populace will find itself a country without a center, a country no longer bonded by the glue of a common religion. Ferguson finds the trend toward declining religiosity alarming because he believes that without a grand, monolithic religious edifice girding the walls of our society, morality itself will crumble - that we will be unable to lock arms as a bulwark against the threat from without:
Over the last few weeks, Britons have heard a great deal from Tony Blair and others about the threat posed to their "way of life" by Muslim extremists such as Muktar Said Ibrahim. But how far has their own loss of religious faith turned Britain into a soft target -- not so much for the superstition Chesterton feared, but for the fanaticism of others?
That concern has proven reactionary time and time again. American and European culture has become increasingly secular yet has managed to retain a common political heritage. That Europe has found itself hosting nests of religious extremists has more to do with the misguided tenets of multiculturalism, lax immigration, an unwillingness to shoulder the burden of fighting extremism, and a lack of focus on assimilation than it does the decline of Christianity. Only by advancing one religious bigotry over another (in the spirit of the Crusades) could Europe have used the unity of religion to keep the Islamists at bay.
On the other hand, Ferguson does manage to make use of the warnings of G.K. Chesterson and C.S. Lewis, the idea that the vacuum created by the death of organized religion would be filled with ever more virulent strains of fundamentalism or a hodgepodge of silly superstitions:
Chesterton feared that if Christianity declined, "superstition" would "drown all your old rationalism and skepticism." When educated friends tell me that they have invited a shaman to investigate their new house for bad juju, I see what Chesterton meant. Yet it is not the spread of such mumbo-jumbo that concerns me as much as the moral vacuum that de-Christianization has created. Sure, sermons are sometimes dull and congregations often sing out of tune. But, if nothing else, a weekly dose of Christian doctrine helps to provide an ethical framework for life. And it is not clear where else such a thing is available in modern Europe.
C.S. Lewis was right in that regard. There's no denying the religious impulse, and in an increasingly open society - one that facilitates pluralism in just about every sphere of life and is less dependent on the strictures of the church - that impulse may find its expression in any number of ways, including a host of inane superstitions and utter nonsense.
But the beliefs of the mystic will never rival organized religion. Such silly beliefs in tree nymphs or shamans or some animistic foolishness lack the historical depth, order, and richness of the major religions. The mystics lack any deep rationalistic tradition. Those superstitions will never represent a tradition - but just the idiosyncratic flights of fancy of a few weak-minded individuals. It may be decadence, but they don't hearken the end and such foolishness will never represent a significant threat to the pillars of Western society.
Besides, that seems a small price to pay for an increasingly tolerant and pluralistic society. And in the end, it's not a theological soundness (though that may be one weapon in the arsenal) or a renewed sense of Christian righteousness that will defeat the barbarians we now face. Uniting against Islamic fundamentalism on religious grounds is not likely to unite us at all if only because religious conceptions differ from person to person, community to community. The place where each community of the West is most likely to find common ground to unite against the barbarism of the fanatic is within the polis, the shared political sphere. And in the political sphere of the West, a rabid and murderous fundamentalism - one intent on subsuming all spheres of existence under its mandates - will find itself incompatible with our beliefs in secularism, tolerance, pluralism, and the rule of law. And in those beliefs - on that secular ground - is where we will all unite to fight the threat to the society that we all share.
