Whither Europe?

There's so much to admire about Philip Jenkins' approach to discussing religious issues that stating one's reservations may seem like nitpicking. But the matters treated in Jenkins' new book God's Continent (Oxford University Press, 2007) are so serious that the reservations need to be expressed. The volume's subtitle sums it up: "Christianity, Islam, and Europe's Religious Crisis." Weighty matter indeed.

As an academic analyst, Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Penn State and a prolific author, consistently refuses to line up with doomsayers and alarmists. This commendable trait was on display, for example, in Pedophiles and Priests, a book arguing that clergy sex abuse, though real, had been blown out of proportion.

Jenkins' study appeared in 1996. The scandal of abuse and coverup erupted in 2002. Unfortunately, the doomsayers and alarmists turned out to be largely correct — the problem was, if anything, worse than many people supposed.

Besides having a tendency to downplay bad news, Jenkins takes a cheerfully big-tent view of Christianity. This quintessentially Protestant trait allows him to find growth and good health in the proliferation of syncretistic third world sects, as he did in The Next Christendom (2002), about the exploding Christianity of the global South, and does now in God's Continent when discussing the sects' growth in Europe.

They're all more or less Christian, aren't they? If so, they're okay with Jenkins. Catholics who think Vatican II got it right in saying the Church of Christ "subsists in" the Catholic Church may be pardoned for having doubts.

In many ways nevertheless God's Continent is a splendid book. If you're going to read nothing else about the religious crisis of Europe, read this. The volume is crammed with helpful information and useful insights.

The picture it paints looks like this. For several decades Europe has been experiencing an accelerating demographic disaster reflected in plummeting birthrates. In many countries old-stock Europeans are no longer replacing themselves. Median age is shooting up, from 37 now to a probable 52.3 by 2050. "Slow-motion auto-genocide" it's called.

Along with demographic collapse, Europe is suffering a crisis of faith. The crisis has progressed further among Protestants than Catholics, but the Catholic Church is deeply affected too, with Mass attendance and priestly and religious vocations way off. It's hard to say which is worse — the religious hostility of the elites or the religious indifference of the multitudes.

Islam is contemporary Europe's great exception. Thanks to immigration and births, Muslim numbers have risen rapidly and now stand at about 4% for the continent as a whole (far higher in France and the Netherlands). Jenkins suggests a figure of 20% late this century. Europe is sometimes said to be on the way to becoming "Eurabia."

Although Jenkins carefully presents the grim facts about the presence of a violence-prone terrorist element in Europe's Muslim population, his tendency to look on the bright side moves him to favor a scenario in which everything works out — sort of.

In this version of events, a smaller but livelier Christianity and an assimilated, tamed Islam learn to coexist in Europe in the years ahead within the avuncular — but culturally dominant — embrace of "Eurosecularity."

That's a better outcome than Armageddon, but it's less than satisfactory from a Catholic point of view. Moreover, Jenkins to the contrary notwithstanding, even this result is no sure thing. As he repeatedly points out, the current situation in Europe is extremely complex and, as God's Continent shows almost despite itself, this story may not have a happy ending. We shall see.