Below is an extract from an interview in which Argentinian historian Mariano Fazio explains the positive aspects of secularisation, from a Christian viewpoint, and why secularisation rose out of the Christian world. Professor Fazio is the head of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. He recently published a book called “A History of Contemporary Ideas: a reading of the process of secularisation”. Extract:

MercatorNet: In your recent book, you distinguish between “strong” secularisation and “weak” secularisation? What do you mean by this?

Mariano Fazio: “Strong” secularisation implies that man has absolute autonomy. That is, it contends that man, and more generally speaking, earthly realities, are self-sufficient. They have no need for transcendence, for God. By “weak” secularisation I mean the growing awareness since the 16th century of the relative autonomy of the secular world. The distinction is between “absolute autonomy”, as represented by Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche, and “relative autonomy”, and “relative autonomy”, as understood by the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church, especially in the document Gaudium et Spes. The latter means that earthly realities have their own laws, but that at the same time, these laws ultimately have their source in God.

MercatorNet: Is it possible to see a positive side to secularisation?

Mariano Fazio: From a Christian standpoint, the positive aspect of secularisation is “declericalisation”. Let me explain. Clericalism asserts that there is no distinction between the natural order and the supernatural order, between political power and spiritual power. This clericalism was a common feature of the Middle Ages. Modernity as “weak” secularisation implies that we are applying the Gospel injunction to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.

[..]
MercatorNet: It seem curious that secularisation sprang from within Christendom, and not in, say India or Saudi Arabia. How can this be the case?

Mariano Fazio: The doctrine of creation, one of the pillars of Christianity, underlies secularisation correctly understood. The world has been created by God and God himself has given it natural laws. God has given reason to men so that they can discover the structure of reality. It also makes it possible to access the deepest realities of life through faith. Harmony between faith and reason — a key theme of the teaching of Benedict XVI — leads to respect for the relative autonomy of earthly realities.

True, in traditionally Christian societies a radical separation between faith and reason has often appeared. This has led to secularisation in its “strong” sense, ie, to laicism and moral relativism. But such are the risks of freedom.

In other religions this is not even possible. They tend to be sceptical about man’s capacity for reason and man’s role is merely to accept revelation; there is no room for rational inquiry. This is what happens in Islamic fundamentalism (which need not be said of all Islam): citizenship in the political order is equated to citizenship in the heavenly order and political laws are derived directly from religious revelation. In such an environment, the possibility of secularisation is eliminated by a religious totalitarianism which denies the fundamental human rights.

[..]

You can read the whole thing at MercatorNet.

I mentioned Bernard Lewis’ (“the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East.”) speech at the AIE dinner recently, you can read the full text here.

Here are some editted extracts the AIE also posted for those lacking the patience to read the whole thing, “Islam and Europe”:

The Muslim attack on Christendom . . . has gone through three phases. The first is from the very beginning of Islam, when the new faith spilled out of the Arabian Peninsula, where it was born, into the Middle East and beyond. It was then that the Muslims conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa–all at that time part of the Christian world–and went beyond into Europe, conquering a sizable part of southwestern Europe and occupying for a while parts of France.

After a long and bitter struggle, the Christians managed to retake part, but not all, of the territory they had lost. They succeeded in Europe, and in a sense Europe was defined by the limits of that success. They failed to retake North Africa or the Middle East, which were lost to Christendom. Notably, they failed to recapture the Holy Land. . . .

That was not the end of the matter. The Islamic world, having failed the first time, was bracing for the second attack, this time conducted not by Arabs and Moors, but by Turks and Tatars. They conquered Anatolia and Russia and captured the ancient Christian citadel of Constantinople. They conquered a large part of the Balkans. Twice they conquered half of Hungary. Twice they reached as far as Vienna. Barbary corsairs from North Africa–well known to historians of the United States–were raiding Western Europe. They went to Iceland–the uttermost limit.

Again, Europe counterattacked, this time more successfully and more rapidly. They succeeded in recovering Russia and the Balkan Peninsula, and in advancing farther into the Islamic lands, chasing their former rulers from whence they had come. For this phase of European counterattack, a new term was invented: imperialism. When the peoples of Asia and Africa invaded Europe, this was not imperialism. When Europe attacked Asia and Africa, it was.
This European counterattack began a new phase which brought the European attack into the very heart of the Middle East. In our own time, we have seen the end of that domination.

***

Osama bin Laden had this to say about the war in Afghanistan, the war which led to the defeat and retreat of the Red Army and the collapse of the Soviet Union. We tend to see that as a Western victory–more specifically an American victory–in the Cold War against the Soviets. For Osama bin Laden, it was nothing of the kind. It was a Muslim victory in a jihad. . . . As bin Laden put it, “We have met, defeated, and destroyed the more dangerous and the more deadly of the two infidel superpowers. Dealing with the soft, pampered and effeminate Americans will be an easy matter.”

This belief was confirmed in the 1990s when we saw attacks on American bases and installations with virtually no effective response of any kind–only angry words and expensive missiles dispatched to remote and uninhabited places. This was a sequence leading up to 9/11. It was clearly intended to be the completion of the first sequence and the beginning of the new one, taking the war into the heart of the enemy camp.

The third phase has clearly begun. We should not delude ourselves as to what it is and what it means. This time it is taking different forms–two in particular–terror and migration.

***

Where do we stand now? The Muslims have certain advantages. They have fervor and conviction, which in most Western countries are either weak or lacking. They are self-assured of the rightness of their cause, whereas we spend most of our time in self-denigration and self-abasement. They have loyalty and discipline, and perhaps most important, they have demography, the combination of natural increase and migration leading to major population changes which could lead within the foreseeable future to significant majorities in some European countries.

But we also have some advantages, the most important of which are knowledge and freedom. The appeal of genuine modern knowledge to a society which, in the more distant past, had a long record of scientific and scholarly achievement, is obvious. They are keenly and painfully aware of their relative backwardness and welcome the opportunity to rectify it.

Less obvious but also powerful is the appeal of freedom. In the past, in the Islamic world the word “freedom” was not used in a political sense. Freedom was a legal concept, not a political concept as in the West. But the idea of freedom in its Western interpretation is making headway. It is becoming more and more understood, more and more appreciated, and more and more desired. It is perhaps in the long run our best hope–perhaps even our only hope–of surviving this developing struggle.

An eye-opening post at A Western Heart on Atheist Conservatives and the history of Christian religious tolerance.

Thats me, apparently.

So what would happen if a war was called and nobody came? Forty eight hours since the gauntlet throw-down and the total number of hits deployed against TOD via the Tinfoil Soldier’s outpost of militant Idiotism: 0.

I disagree with Socialism, so I mock it. Kip here disagrees with Libertarianism, so he has a tourette’s episode and declares a war. Not because Libertarians are “wrong”, though, but because Libertarianism is “a deluded and horrible ideology” (but not wrong!) and Libertarians are “c#nts”. Go figure. Perhaps a war on C#ntism would have been more appropriate?

Is he a lead soldered tin soldier, perhaps? That would at least explain his statement that “the problem with the terrorists and the Muslims is a poisonous soup with leftovers from just about every international disaster of the last 200 years”. This little ‘terrorists-as-victims’ insight also gives him away as a closet Socialist, which would explain the hissy fit. What it doesn’t explain is what gave me away as a Libertarian, considering I’ve never used the term on this site. Communist and c#nt, I can understand. But Libertarian? I can only blame the lead poisoning. A soup of it.

In other comment shenanigans last week:

John asks:

And how much is the Serbian government paying you two [thats me and Julia Gorin] to spread propaganda?

Not as much as the Illuminati do to spread theirs, pal, but thanks for asking. The Vast Right-wing Conspiracy doesn’t fund itself, you know. Memo to Belgrade: send guns and money, I am under attack!

Finally, a young Muslim fella called Ibrahim trots out that silly old “monotheism” argument against Christianity:

Your comment regarding the trinity being too hard for the Prophet to understand are quite accurate- not a single person on this planet could make 3 things add upto 1. besides even the bible doesnt support it.

Sorry, but who’s adding? Is it that hard to get the concept of 3 aspects of the one? Do “mind, body and soul” add up to 3 people?

Everything in the world has the same three aspects – substance, form and purpose. So does God. No surprise there. If an electron can be both a particle and a wave at the same time, I think God can pull off this Trinity thing. Muslims claim Allah is “unknowable” than whine that the Christian Trinity cannot be understood. Look, if you can convince yourself that there is science in the Koran, than sure as raisins you can grasp this Triune God business. Its not that hard. Think of it as Quantum Theology. By “Koran science” logic Quantum Mechanics is predicted in the Bible, which by the way does too support the Trinity:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,… (Matthew 28:19)

I believe St Augustine described it quite well when he used the analogy of love that involves a lover, the loved one and a spirit of love between them.

For further explanation go here and here.

What I’d love to hear is an explanation of how on Earth Muhammed came to the conclusion that the Trinity consists of God, Mary and Jesus (see Suras 5:119, 4:171 and 5:75-76).
Hardly puts him (or his followers) in a position of authority from which to criticise Christianity.

I found the following maps quite fascinating.

“Imperial History of the Middle East
“Who has conquered the Middle East over the course of world events? See 5,000 years of history in 90 seconds”:

“History of Religion: The geography of faith and its wars across history. See 5,000 years of religion in 90 seconds”:

The above two are from the Maps of War site. They have some more maps here.

“Animation of the spread of religions across Afro-Eurasia over centuries.”
This one covers the last 2,000 years:

You can also see a more detailed map of the current geographical spread of the world’s religions (not just the 5 above) on Spiegel Online.

Sean Scallon understands the appeal of Islam and Islamism to certain alienated subgroups on both the far Left and the far Right rather well:

[In the 21st century] growth in Islam will come from Third World immigration of course. But it will also come from white converts as well and they will come from two sources of thought.

Islam always has had an ideological appeal to those on the far left and right. To a cultural Marxist, Islam is the God that hasn’t failed (unlike Communism), at least not yet. Its diverse, multicultural following and the fact that it is the religion of the Third Word i.e. it was founded there and expanded there outside of Europe and the West, makes it a perfect vehicle for cultural upheaval and egalitarianism. Marxism derided religion which limited its appeal while Islam is a religion and has mass appeal. And within an adversarial culture, converting to Islam becomes the perfect vehicle to shock one’s parents and friends and peers. Indeed, Jean-Paul Sartre himself became more and more fascinated with Islam as the communist left declined in his later years. This has more of chance of happening with the nominal baptized or secular Christian than anyone else. Think of John Walker Lindh, the Marin County, California teenager who got fed up with empty secularist lifestyle of parents and neighbors and converted to Islam and joined the Taliban in Afghanistan, and you’ll understand the type. Since 9-11 and since George Bush II give Islam his stamp of approval by calling it a “religion of peace,” there’s been a growing study of Islam within in the media and with others who are curious to know more about it. Such study, no doubt, will increase the size of the pool of converts for Islam within the U.S.

On the other side, Nazis have always appreciated Islam’s marshal spirit and ascetic, non-bourgeois lifestyle along with its ability to submit the will of the mass towards one deity or person. They found it far superior to Christian piety which they found to be nothing more than religion for wimps, not the supermen they were supposed to be. Those who are not inclined towards Nazism still find these same qualities admirable, along with Islam’s male-dominated patriarchy. Women and men do not pray together. If you are a fellow who is unchurched right at the moment because you think the modern church in the U.S. is too female dominated and has no place for you, then Islam may be your scene. Think of [the] guy who used to attend Promise Keeper rallies in football stadiums and spent his time crying on the shoulder of another guy while being told what an awful person he was. When he realized the whole thing was nothing more than a religious version of 1990s male bonding without the tom-tom drums, campfires and war paint and when he realized his wife and her friends were laughing their heads off at him down at the solon, then you’ll know the kind of person I’m talking about. In fact the crisis of the maleless church has become such a concern that, according to religious news reports, that certain pastors have gotten to the point of parking Harley Davidson motorcycles out front of the entryways of their churches and putting on football uniforms and using football metaphors to attract males back into the pews again. But Islam’s call may be more enticing than that just more passing Christian fads.

Examples are fun, so here’s a couple more.

The alliance between Hezbollah (and Iran) and the far Left in Lebanon and around the world is a great example of the first trend described above.

A “story” (read: propaganda piece) in the Montreal Gazette, Dec 10th, by Maria Abi-Habib:

Ibtisam Jamaleddine stood in the room of her dead son, Maxim. Maxim was 18 years old when he was mistaken for a fighter and killed by an Israeli missile during this summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Pictures of Che Guevara and soccer players as well as a plaque dedicated to Shiite Islam’s most revered imam, Ali, adorn the walls of his room. They tell a story unknown in the West, of the complex nature of forces that fought Israel last summer.

During the war, U.S. President George W. Bush pitted the conflict as one fuelled by “Islamo-fascism,” pushed by Hezbollah, the Party of God. But fighting alongside Hezbollah was an older, more seasoned resistance movement – the Lebanese Communist Party, which allied with the Islamic party for the first time and showed its members that Islam and communism can complement each other.

For Maxim’s mother, the alliance of these two ideologies was natural and the pictures in her son’s room of a communist martyr and a Muslim hero attest to that.

She said her son wasn’t religious. She said she sees her son as part of a line of resistance fighters “that began with Imam Ali and went to Che and then to Maxim. It’s one lineage of struggle.”

The nature of forces and alliances in Lebanon may be complex, but this is hardly an example of that complexity. Communism and Islamism in bed together makes perfect sense, as both are totalitarian fantasies of a utopia, which, at every attempt at implementation turns into its hellish opposite. (Isn’t it hilarious when Muslims counter real-world examples of the failings of Islam by saying the examples don’t apply to “true” Islam because “there is currently no ‘true’ Islamic state in existance”? Gee, I wonder why?) Neither is the above alliance happening “for the first time”. Hezbollah and Lebanese Communist Party members have been running on voting tickets together in Lebanese elections ever since Hezbollah was forced to change its image from sectarian terrorist militia to a political party of “resistance” at the end of the civil war in the early nineties.

Here’s a couple of recent happy snaps of the happy couple:

“Supporters of the Lebanese Communist Party wave a party flag last Sunday during a peaceful sit-in organized by Hezbollah in Beirut.” according to the Montreal Gazette

Dec 2006, Hezbollocks-led protest in Beirut – A drop of Red in a sea of Yellow and Orange.

And if you think that a portrait of Che Guevara on the wall next to an Islamic one is an anomaly, think again:

Prime Minister of Chechnya is not a man to be messed with, especially if you work for him.

At the age of just 30, Ramzan Kadyrov counts the Russian President Vladimir Putin as a close ally, wields enormous power in his war-ravaged world-infamous republic, and is the object of a Stalin-style personality cult.

[..] He has advocated polygamy, banned gambling, and clamped down on the sale of alcohol – all policies that would cause a riot if implemented elsewhere in Russia.

[..]Inside, Kadyrov’s office resembles the boardroom of a multinational corporation, albeit with a few significant differences. The federal Russian flag stands alongside the green flag of the Chechen republic, and from one wall, a framed black-and-white picture of Che Guevara stares down. Kadyrov clearly identifies with the Argentine who made his name in Cuba, since his fan club (yes, he does have a fan club) often waves aloft stencilled posters of the Chechen leader wearing Che’s beret and adopting the same uncompromising stare.

[..]A colourful portrait of a woman wearing a headscarf adorns another wall, presumably Kadyrov’s mother, and I notice at least two likenesses of his benefactor, Vladimir Putin.

Through the window, the green-topped minaret of a newly built mosque reaches up into the gloomy Grozny sky, a reminder that Kadyrov has styled himself as a devout Muslim and adopted elements of shariah for his regime.

Yep, you read correctly, a chunk of Russia is now partially implementing Sharia Law. But don’t get too carried away with that one – this is an elaborate and cynical exercise in sock-puppetry, not a naive subjugation to a creeping Islamification. This is Russia, not Sweden, and the Russia Empire has centuries of experience with “self-governing” Muslim populations within its borders. More importantly it has several centuries experience of being governed by Muslims – an experience permanantly etched into the national psyche and untempered by Western political correctness and one Russia will not be repeating any time soon (“scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar”, goes a Russian proverb). And by soon I mean ever. I had a post on Islam and demographics in Russia in the works that I am thinking of posting in several smaller posts, largely in response to the “Russia is turning Muslim” silliness that swept the blogosphere recently. Chechnya is only a very small part of Russia, the Muslims of the North Caucasus are a very different breed to say the Tartars, who make up the biggest Muslim segment in Russia, and the whole Islamification-of-Russia line is a misfire. But I digress.

Now a quick look at the other end of the spectrum – the far right and Islamism. Its not called Islamo-Fascism for nothing, and if you need proof, look up the collaboration of Bosnian Muslims with the Nazis in World War 2. Look up the relationship between the Mufti of Jerusalem and Hitler. Look up the list of speakers at the recent Holocaust conference in Iran.

I’ll throw in just one more example though, that relates directly to the “Promise Keeper rally enthusiast” types Scallon is talking about:

Turning Muslim in Texas

Praying in Texas
George W Bush may be backed by Christian fundamentalists but in his home state of Texas, Islam is the latest big draw. The Bible belt is transferring its allegiance to the Qur’an because, for many erstwhile Christians, believe it or not, the church is too liberal.

Eric was a Baptist preacher before he became a Muslim 14 years ago. Now he prays five times a day – even in the middle of watching a football game. His wife, Karen, also a convert, is covered from head to toe in the traditional Muslim burka. Islam, says Eric, ‘is everything I wanted Christianity to be’.

The Bible belt is not about to turn into the Our’an belt, any more than Russia is about to turn into Russiastan, so don’t take the “transferring its allegiance” baloney above too seriously. But do check out the video for the comedy. You can watch the full 24-minute documentary, “Turning Muslim in Texas”, on Google Video. Here it is:

See also my previous posts on Islam’s useful idiots on the Left.

A must read op-ed in the LA Times, by Raymond Ibrahim:

[..] when Muslims beat infidels, it’s just too bad for the latter; they must submit to their new overlords’ rules with all the attendant discrimination and humiliation mandated for non-Muslims. Yet when Islam is beaten, demands for apologies and concessions are expected from the infidel world at large.

[..] If some Muslims wish to wage eternal jihad until Islam dominates the globe, they are only being true to Islam and its doctrines as they understand it. However, in that case, where the world is divided into two warring camps, Islam and Infidelity — or, in Islamic terms, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War — how can these Muslims expect any concessions from the international community? The natural conclusion of the view that “might makes right” is “to the victor go the spoils.”

[..] But perhaps Muslims cannot be blamed for expecting special treatment, as well as believing that jihad is righteous and decreed by the Almighty. The West constantly goes out of its way to confirm such convictions. By criticizing itself, apologizing and offering concessions — all things the Islamic world has yet to do — the West reaffirms that Islam has a privileged status in the world.

[..] Muslims’ zeal for their holy places and lands is not intrinsically blameworthy. Indeed, there’s something to be said about being passionate and protective of one’s own. Here the secular West — Christendom’s prodigal son and true usurper — can learn something from Islam. For whenever and wherever the West concedes ideologically, politically and especially spiritually, Islam will be sure to conquer. If might does not make right, zeal apparently does.

So anyone going demand an apology for court ordered Bible burning in Uzbekistan? Can we get a little outrage at Christians, including priests, beaten and their Bibles burned in Kyrzystan? Christian priests brutally tortured and murdered in Pakistan and Kurdistan? Christians not being allowed to repair their churches in Egypt or churches demolished in Pakistan and Malaysia or burned in Nigeria? Christian schoolgirls beheaded in Indonesia (their parents said they forgave the killers)? Any imams, muftis, sheikhs out there apologised for any of this yet?

Raymond Ibrahim, an assistant in the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress, has a book coming out called “The Al Qaeda Reader” which will be published April 17th 2007. The book contains “translations of religious texts and propaganda”, tracing “the origins and evolution of Al Qaeda” and “revealing an ideology that calls for a relentless jihad against non-Muslim “infidels,” repudiates democracy in favor of Islamic law, stresses the importance of martyrdom, and mocks the notion of “moderate” Islam.”

You can find more great op-eds from him on Victor Davis Hanson’s site.

(h/t Snapshots)

Melanie Phillips expressed her view this week that re-Christianisation is vital for Europe if it is to defend its Western values against Islamisation, an opinion I happen to agree with (h/t Saint):

The crucial insight here is that only a strong indigenous faith has the capacity to resist Islamisation. That is why the collapse of Christianity in Britain and Europe and its steady replacement by secularisation is so catastrophic for the defence of the west. The useful idiots who believe that only a secular society can hold off the forces of irrational belief at the heart of the Islamic jihad have got this diametrically the wrong way round. Secularisation produces cultural enfeeblement, because the pursuit of personal happiness trumps absolutely everything else. The here and now is all that matters. Dying for a cause, however noble, becomes an absolute no-no. It’s better to be dhimmi than dead – the view that has now effectively prevailed in Britain and Europe.

[..] Although the US is the high temple of consumerism, it is still a country with a very strong sense of its Christian faith. That fact is key to its robust sense of national identity, confidence and pride; and because it has such a strong sense of itself as a nation, it is prepared to fight to defend itself – the one bit of the analysis that the Islamists got wrong (although there are now deeply disturbing signs that the west’s cultural enfeeblement is beginning to erode American resolve too, at least around the edges).

That is why the cultural cringe of the Church of England before the advance of both secularism and Islamism is such unmitigated disaster, and why the Pope’s recent intervention was so significant. That is why those who sneer at President Bush’s strong Christian faith are cultural lemmings. And that is why I, a British Jew, argue that it is vital that Britain and Europe re-Christianise if they are to have any chance of defending western values.

She has drawn sharp criticism for this statement firstly because she does not herself subscribe to the belief system she is laying her hopes on and secondly because a re-Christianised Europe seems like a wild fantasy to some considering its current state. Writes Norman Geras:

A more serious problem still is that the re-Christianization of Britain and Europe just isn’t, as things currently stand, a credible societal project. Christians have been doing their bit to spread the Christian word for a very long time now. What is suddenly going to make the difference and bring new adherents flooding in, or ‘activate’ hitherto passive or lapsed believers?

Well, I can list several factors, that may not mean much when taken alone, but in combination may do just that.

1. Hundreds of thousands of Catholic Polish migrants have moved West since the 2004 EU enlargement round – about 300,000 to Britain alone. In Poland over half the population attends mass weekly, compared to under 20% in France or Italy. Poland accounts for about a quarter of Europe’s seminarians and thousands are migrating westward. Said Father Jan-Marie Szewek: “We Franciscans want to join in the rechristianization of Europe”.

Call it the Polish pastor effect.

2.According to some estimates the world’s fastest growing religion is not Islam but Christianity. Its just that most of the growth is happening in the Third World now and it is the Pentecostal Churches that are gaining the numbers. The Catholic Church is also experiencing strong growth. And this revitalised Christianity is starting to spill over back into the West. Says a Kenyan pastor in one of the largest churches in London: “I am in this country, believing that God sent me here in Great Britain to make a voice on His behalf to let them know that they need to repent and come back to God.”
Sociologist of religion Philip Jenkins, in his book “The Next Christendom: The Rise of Global Christianity”, argues that “within the next 25 years the population of the world’s Christians is expected to grow to 2.6 billion (making Christianity by far the world’s largest faith)”. An increased percentage of Christian migrants to Europe is likely, as European politics continue to shift towards the anti-Islamic immigration right. And the Pentecostal Churches have been growing rapidly in Australia even without a significant contribution from migrants. It won’t be too big of a surprise if its takes off in Europe too. Even the presence of a large Muslim population itself may contribute to a resurgence of religiosity amongst the secular Europeans, finding themselves inspired to seek their own Christian roots, much like European secularism draws many Muslim migrants towards secularism and more liberal interpretations of Islam. By the way, according to Wikipedia (edit: which quotes bible.ca) Christianity gets 2,500,000 converts per year, compared to Islam’s 865,000. Majority Muslim nations have higher birth rates, but that advantage is dimishing – birth rates are falling in Muslim majority nations, while Christianity is gaining in other countries with high birth rates.

3. Melanie Phillips is far from being the only non-Christian in Europe who holds to the above view. Said Oriana about Pope Benedict XVI: “I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It’s that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion.” Upon her death Oriana left all her books and papers to Pope Benedict. She had a private audience with him last year and considered him “an ally in her campaign to rally Christians in Europe against what she saw as a Muslim crusade against the West.” This emerging alliance between the anti-Islamisation secularists and conservative Christians is as natural, even as it is as odd, as the alliance between the Islamists and the far Left. And even religion needs good publicity. Don’t also underestimate the ability of Pope Benedict himself to pump some life back into European Christianity. And by the way, why did he chose the name Benedict? Here’s why:

He was thinking of not one, but two previous Benedicts.

Saint Benedict, Benedict XVIThe first was not even a Pope. In fact, he was just a simple monk who desired nothing more than to live a quiet life of prayer and work and lead others to do the same. This Benedict, born in the 5th century in Nursia, an area of Italy, fled the decadent urban life of Rome to seek a life of solitude in the country. Monastic life was chaotic and unregulated at that time, and so this young man gathered a band of monks around him and formed a community, writing a rule of life that was so practical that it became the pattern for thousands of monks and monasteries all over the world. These monks who followed this rule ultimately were the ones who evangelized and educated Europe during the “dark ages” and are still doing the work of evangelization and education today.

It is clear that Pope Benedict XVI is dedicated to gathering around himself a band of disciples who, through prayer and hard work, will lead to the re-Christianization of Europe and to the carrying of the gospel to lands that have not yet heard it.

4. In times of trouble and hardship people turn back to religion. It is as simple as that. As conditions in Europe worsen, with the aging of the population, faultering economies and problems that have come with over-immigration, and the going gets tough, the tough, and especially the weak, will get going to church.

5. Its the demographics, stupid. From the cover story of Prospect magazine, “God returns to Europe”, by Eric Kaufmann:

Europe—especially western Europe—is seen as the world leader in secular modernisation, and is used as the model by Norris and Inglehart for their theory of secularisation. But if western Europe really is the trend-setter for secularism, there is a problem: secularisation appears to be losing force in its own backyard. Western Europe can broadly be divided in two. On the one hand are Catholic countries like Spain or Ireland, where religiosity is still high—around 60 per cent of the Irish population regularly attend church—and secularisation arrived only in the second half of the 20th century. On the other are the largely Protestant nations (including Britain) and Catholic France, which secularised earlier. But survey data from 1981-2004 show that in these latter nations, on average, postwar generations are no longer becoming more secular. It seems as though western Europe, with the possible exception of Italy, will converge towards a church attendance rate of little more than 5 per cent. However this will mask a much larger proportion—around half—who continue to describe themselves as religious and affiliate with a religious denomination.

These people, described by Grace Davie as “believing without belonging,” are seen by some as carriers of a flimsy faith which will soon disappear, and which doesn’t affect behaviour or attitudes. But if this is the case, how do we explain the fact that the fertility of these non-attending believers is much closer to church attenders than to non-believers? The non-attending religious are also significantly more likely than non-believers to identify themselves as ideologically conservative, even when controlling for education, wealth, age and generation. And the religious population has two demographic advantages over its non-believing counterpart. First, it maintains a 15-20 per cent fertility lead over the non-religious. Second, religious people in the childbearing 18-45 age range are disproportionately female. Offset against this is the much younger age structure of secularists.

The pivotal question is where the balance lies between religious fertility and religious abandonment in the secular cutting-edge societies of France and Protestant Europe. The population balance in these countries stands at roughly 53 per cent non-religious to 47 per cent religious. My projections, based on demographic differences between the populations and current patterns of religious abandonment, suggest that the secular population will continue to grow at a decelerating rate for three or four more decades, to peak at around 55 per cent. The proportion of secular people will then begin to decline between 2035 and 2045. The momentum behind secularisation in the most secular countries is a reflection of the religious abandonment of the pre-1945 generations, which overwhelmed the fertility advantage of the faithful. The end of apostasy in more recent generations means a population more religious at the end of the 21st century than at its beginning. As in the case of the Mormons or early Christians, demography rather than mass conversion will be the main agent of change.

He then adds the compounding significance of immigration to the equation:

This slow shift against secularisation would have only a gradual impact on the spirit of European society were it not for immigration. Immigration from Latin America has enabled American Catholics to grow despite losing far more believers to other denominations than they get in return. In Europe, immigration will similarly drive the rise of the religious population, especially its Islamic part.

However, due to factors I have already mentioned above, Islam’s immigration advantage is likely to diminish while that of Christianity is likely to grow.

So lets not write off European Christianity just yet.

UPDATE: Michael Burleigh with a couple more possibilities in the Telegraph, Nov 7:

What he [Nick Spencer of the Theos think tank in Britain] describes as a new, diffuse concern with “wellbeing” will inevitably make religion more important to politics, in that politicians will have to address an essentially religious agenda, based on values and ultimate meanings, of the sort with which Senator McCain electrified the Conservatives when he addressed their party conference.

It is also probable that infantile Islamic enragement, and the sillier provocations of “diversity” officers in local government, will sooner rather than later trigger a much broader revival of cultural Christianity, as people balk at the insensitive disregard of this country’s two-millennia-old religious traditions, which are far from defunct in the moral imaginations of many.

And I like it.

[..] The question is, how do we find our way out of the wilderness that has grown in the heart of man? How does a society, a whole civilization, that is on the skids and bound for destruction, arrest its slide? I pose this today in the broadest possible way, because I think it is the one, common, practical, and even political question that should remain near the front of all minds capable of charity and goodwill.

The obvious answer, to those who realize that our civilization was built not only by human hands, but under the guidance of Church and religion, is to counsel a re-centring, a return to God. But for those who have moved and been moved so far away, that the very idea of God chills them, what paths lie open?

I think there are quite a few, and that all have in common this mysterious element of joy. I think art, broadly, offers many alternative means to the kind of regeneration — moral, and ethical, as well as aesthetic — that can help us out of our enclosed spaces. Learning to draw, from nature; to sing, in key; to dance, in pattern; to write, metrically; even to sew, or to master carpenter’s joints — all such enterprises offer the lost soul an individual direction out of the jungle.

The reason why, is that each is a discipline that restores us to harmony with the natural order of things. Each offers a way of seeing into God’s creation, and puts us in the presence of what is infinitely greater than ourselves.

To be able to draw a single flower, with full attention to all its colours and parts, is to be lifted out of one’s tawdry self into a realm where good, truth, and beauty still prevail. It is to recover joy.

Thank you kindly for the reminder.

Go ahead, jog your memory. I insist.