The light of God's truth has been snuffed out in Europe, now the least Christian and the most secularized and socialized part of the world.
This week, Black Rock Congregational Church is focusing on worldwide missionary programs and the 20-plus missionaries that the church supports. In that connection, rather than a traditional sermon, we at Black Rock-Long Ridge Congregational Church (North Stamford, Connecticut) heard a report by Dr. Ted Noble, one of those missionaries. His subject was the appalling decline of Christianity throughout Europe.
Fewer than one percent of Europeans are Christian believers. Elsewhere, especially in Africa and Asia, the percentage is much higher and growing. Europe has become a spiritual wasteland in which people look to the political state for their salvation.
In the 19th century, Africa, the Dark Continent, was looked upon as the great field of activity for Christian missionaries. Conditions are the reverse today. American Episcopalians, for example, who seek a return to the Bible and a turning away from the secularized social gospel that has overtaken their church, now look to African bishoprics for support.
Dr. Nobel talked mostly about the opportunities and the needs for missionary work in Europe. But it's important also to ask why Europe is in spiritual decline.
This is a compelling question, since Christianity's greatest, lasting impact was in western Europe. After the final fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, Christianity was left as the only civilizing force in western Europe. Without the Catholic Church in Rome, libraries and education itself would not have survived. Concepts of civilized law and order, based upon the Roman Empire's codex, were preserved in Christian canonical law.
The Eastern Roman Empire, based in Constantinople (later Byzantium, today Istanbul), survived the onslaught of Islam for another thousand years until 1453. But Constantinople was not able to exercise much direct influence upon western Europe after the fall of Rome. Christian city-states all around the eastern Mediterranean and into Russia, and parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church, were continually subjected to Islamic jihad after the 7th century.
Europeans, before the evolution of strong nation-states in the 16th century, thought of themselves as inhabitants of Christendom. It is thus accurate to assert that everything that we know as western civilization is an exclusive product of Christianity emanating from the church at Rome.
What went wrong?
The short answer is the French Revolution of 1789.
That cataclysmic event destroyed Christian civilization and instituted the religion of socialism, first in France, then throughout Europe.
In the simplest terms, French philosophers of the ill-named Continental European Enlightenment (the 18th century) decapitated Western civilization. The human soul and conscience, moral codes, and the relationship of each individual human to the universe and his fellow humans were tossed into the trash heap. The Western world was figuratively reduced to a headless body that reacted blindly to external, physical stimulae.
The secular, atheistic religion of socialism (in the United States, liberal-progressivism) ignores people's spiritual needs. It asserts, instead, that only material needs for water, food, clothing shelter, and sex count in political society. In socialist religious theory, all of these things can be administered by the secular political state in ways that permit state planners to manipulate and control every aspect of human social behavior.
No one can logically accept that liberal-socialist doctrine and simultaneously support the metaphysical, natural-law principles that were the basis of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, Jefferson's inalienable human rights flowing from our Creator God.
Philosophical materialism implies that the human soul is a myth; there is only the physical tangle of nerves, muscle, and bones constituting the physical human body. Non-material qualities like personal responsibility, piety, patriotism, and morality are dismissed as value judgments, lost in the morass of moral relativism. Karl Marx, for example, sneered at religion as the opium of the masses, calling it a fiction created by the ruling class to stupefy and subjugate the workers.
Dismissing the Mind of God and the natural law that flowed from it, intellectuals of the French Revolution believed themselves capable of manipulating humans, in the mass, as if they were puppets. They expected their secular religion of socialism to bring harmony and perfection to human life.
Instead, they took the Western world back to the lawless days of the hordes of Genghis Khan, when the sword was the only source of order and right. The millions of dead and maimed in two World Wars and the murders of tens of millions by the French Revolutionary councils, Napoleon, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, and Castro are the legacy of French socialistic materialism and secularity.
Europe, once the driving force in world culture, has become a hollow shell that the inflow of Muslim immigrants will crack and overwhelm in coming decades, unless Christian missionaries succeed in bringing Europeans back to Jesus Christ.
viewfrom1776@thomasbrewton.com
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/
Read more articles by Thomas E. Brewton
Dear Mr Brewton,
Considering my characterization of Europeans as “Herd-men,” and “proud apes,” perhaps it will be little surprising to some that I may on this occasion come to their defense.
Europe is an extremely diverse continent. There are some 45 countries in Europe. Their languages, cultures, beliefs, political systems, religions etc mirror the rest of the world.
Anyone driving through Europe will immediately be struck by its diversity, and hospitality. History presents itself at almost every turn. Europeans wear religion on their sleeves. Everywhere are ancient churches, shrines, cemeteries. Crucifixes are hard to miss; as are the regular religious processions, nativity scenes, and Easter parades. What is taken for granted in the practice of religious faith in Europe would result in a law suit in the United States. Many Europeans regard the American prohibition of expressing their faith publicly (their Christian faith, that is) an infringement of their liberty.
In the modest town of Antequera (our nearest large town) there is a population of some 40,000. Yet there are over 30 active churches – granted, mostly Catholic.
The “fewer than one percent” of Christian believers you refer to seems to come from Dr Noble himself. The organization, Greater Europe Mission (www.ministrywatch.com), of which he was President until 2007 claims that “In Spain, only about one-percent claim to be born again Christians”. That is not surprising since Spain is a Catholic country (and I have no dog in this fight – I am not Catholic). Yet surveys show that 76% of Spaniards claim to be Catholic, 2% other religions, and 19% non-religious. In the United States 77% claim to be Christian, and 14% claim to be non-religious - so unless we disqualify Catholics as Christians, the number of ‘believers’ is about the same.
Given those statistics, we then find that the United States has a teenage pregnancy rate far in excess of the European average. In the United States the rate is 53 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19, whereas the highest in Europe is the UK at 20 per 1,000. Even the most permissive of European countries (the Netherlands) only has 5 per 1,000. A UNICEF Report of 2001 shows the US teenage pregnancy rate is 4 times that of the European average.
My reference to statistics and research will also strike some as odd. I have contempt for research and statistics – they are the refuge of scoundrels. They are inevitably designed to justify the unjustifiable, or to raise money. Now I see from the Ministry Watch web site that they say this: “Pray that the FUNDING will be raised for this outreach and that many would hear the clear message of the Gospel once it goes on the air.”
This radio station is to “go on air” in Catalunya, in North Eastern Spain. That’s a little like taking ice to the arctic. Granted, some may be persuaded to abandon their Catholicism and embrace a competing Christian denomination, but it will be so insignificant as to be inconsequential. If Dr Noble was aiming his ministry at Muslims in Spain, I’d be more supportive.
But when people, even of good and worthy intentions as Dr Noble clearly is, start quoting ‘statistics’ to persuade people to part with their hard-earned money, warning bells ring for me. And living here in Spain, from where it seems Dr Noble derives his statistics, there is certainly no shortage of belief in Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Holy Bible. Most cars have crucifixes dangling from their rear-view mirrors. Easter parades involve almost the entire populations of towns and villages. Christmas is not a commercial affair; it is a time for family and God. Over Christmas the streets are bare – not a soul; no shops open. The same goes for Sunday here in Inland Spain – no Sunday supermarkets or shopping Malls – they take their Sabbath seriously.
It seems to me that Dr Noble is selling Jesus Christ to those who already believe in Jesus Christ, but just not in the way Dr Noble believes that they should believe in Jesus Christ. Yet, perhaps that could be part of the problem – one person claiming to ‘know’ what Jesus had in mind even though the next person claims the same insight. Here in Spain the only thing that still surprises me is that so many people have preserved their faith even though they have been brutally persecuted in the name of Jesus Christ – and I’m not talking about centuries ago – I’m talking about the living memory of many I meet here in the villages on a daily basis.
The other issues raised in your article that I would like to address are Jefferson, the law of nature, the so-called Enlightenment, and the Church’s persecution of the poor and disentitled in Europe. But given the length of this Comment, perhaps I could do that in a follow up Comment.
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
Comment by Joseph BH McMillan | May 2, 2008
Joseph BH McMillan said "…we then find that the United States has a teenage pregnancy rate far in excess of the European average."
I recall reading somewhere that the teenage pregnancy rate and illegitimate birth rate is higher in the more fundamentalist states. Is that so?
Comment by PaulBurnett | May 4, 2008
"Here in Spain the only thing that still surprises me is that so many people have preserved their faith even though they have been brutally persecuted in the name of Jesus Christ."
My Spanish history may be somewhat lacking, however I believe that General Franco was active in defence of the Catholic Church. El Caudillo de la Última Cruzada y de la Hispanidad did not "brutally persecute people in Christ's name".
Persecution of Catholics and the Church was carried out earlier by the Popular Front in the mid 30s. Is this what you are referring to?
Comment by Leigh | May 5, 2008
Leigh, you are absolutely right, Franco did support the Catholic Church, and vice versa. That is what I am referring to. The Church and Franco worked hand in hand to root out and exterminate those in opposition to him, or the Church. Hence the “ultimate crusader” you refer to.
In Cadiz, for example, the local priest complained bitterly to Franco’s forces that they had not massacred sufficient citizens.
In other parts of Andalucia, those who had any knowledge (never mind writings) of people like Rousseau or Roosevelt were executed – often in front of their families. The Church did not like people like Rousseau.
Where local peasants, in order to stave off starvation, raided landowners estates (who had fled North), 10 locals were executed for each cow or pig they ate from the estate. The Church and rich landowners had common interests.
The Church was complicit in much of what happened in Franco’s reign of terror. That is why many here in Andalucia, for example, vehemently oppose the Church, yet fervently believe in God.
Paul Burnett – I didn’t know that, but would be interested to know whether it is true.
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
Comment by Joseph BH McMillan | May 5, 2008