Can the de-Christianization of Europe be reversed?
A reader in England writes:
I know you know all about this “decline of European Christianity.”
But how do you propose to “re-Christianise” the West, especially in the light of the twin towers of “secularisation” and “Islamification.”
Do you have a specific set of ideas/action plan to do so?
Or have you written that possibility off?
LA replies:
I don’t have a plan.
Reader replies:
Oh dear! I was hoping you did (have a plan to re-Christianise Europe or at least the UK).
LA replies:
Sorry …
I do have a plan to de-Islamize Europe. That is something that is within human power, if the understanding and will exists to do it.
I don’t have a plan to re-Christianize Europe. That is not something that is within human power.
But that doesn’t mean I’ve written off the possibility. You suggest a false opposition between having an “action plan” to re-Christianize Europe, and writing off the possibility of Europe being re-Christianized. The re-Christianization of Europe depends on people re-discovering and evangelizing the truth of Christianity, and that can’t be determined by any human action plan.
Also, before we could think realistically of the re-Christianization of Europe, there would first have to be the re-Christianization of Christianity, since organized Christianity as it now exists is very largely a sub-set of liberalism. As just one example, look at how, within five years of his death, that disastrous, liberal/neocon, “religion of man” pope, John Paul II, who handed out sainthoods as freely as the entertainment industry hands out awards at its virtually-weekly awards dinners, is now well on the way to being made a saint himself. This is not Christianity; it is man’s worship of himself, a cult of which John Paul was a leading proponent.
D. from Seattle writes:
Regarding re-Christianization of the West, your reader from England asked: “Do you have a specific set of ideas/action plan to do so? Or have you written that possibility off?”
As a simple reminder, there was never a specific action plan to Christianize the West and the rest of the world in the first place. All it took was “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19)
Rather than treating re-Christianization of the world as a NASA mission to Mars-level exercise in complex planning and execution, it is up to each and every one of us to have faith in God and to do our small part, day by day.
LA writes:
My answer to the reader in England was not adequate. Much of Europe was originally Christianized by the organized evangelical efforts of the Catholic Church, for example, Patrick’s mission to Ireland in the fifth century, Augustine’s mission to England in 597, and the evangelization of the Germans during the Carolingian period. But those efforts were possible because there was a spiritually—and materially—vital Church able to carry them out. Are there churches or denominations with such energy and such a sense of mission now? I’m not aware that there are. If there are, great. But the reader was asking me a question several levels about my pay grade.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 17, 2011 11:18 AM | Send