Christians at the Christian Post are mourning the fall of Christianity in Europe. They don't want to admit that people simply moved on from superstition as the science progressed, but are actually admitting that it's because the Church is not scary enough and does not oppress people anymore ("it became comfortable and unthreatening"), people are not repenting anymore, they don't feel guilty.
Quote:Europe didn’t lose Christianity overnight. The Church gave it away
Europe did not wake up one morning and decide to stop believing in God. The old story is too neat, too flattering to modern secularism, and too convenient for the Church. It lets everyone pretend the crisis was caused by science, liberalism, or moral decline “out there.” But the harder truth is this: in Europe, Christianity did not only get pushed out. In many places, it hollowed out from within.
That is why the crisis of Christianity in Europe is not mainly a story about atheists winning arguments. It is a story about churches losing credibility, losing seriousness, and then losing the right to be heard.
The cathedrals are still there. The feast days survive in the calendar. Political leaders still invoke “Christian values” when it suits them. Millions still tick “Christian” on census forms. But much of this is Christianity as ruins, Christianity as atmosphere, Christianity as nostalgia. It is inheritance without discipleship. Memory without obedience. Identity without repentance.
That is when decline begins: not when the Church is attacked, but when it becomes comfortable.
The corruption of institutions. The wars of religion. The compromises with empire. The nationalist idolatries.
Europe did not turn from Christianity simply because it became secular. It turned because the churches often gave it reasons to do so.
This is the point many conservative Christians refuse to face. They are eager to blame secular elites, immigration, sexual ethics, consumerism, and moral relativism for Europe’s spiritual collapse. Some of that criticism has force. But it is dishonest if it skips the Church’s own guilt. A Church that confuses faith with cultural dominance should not be shocked when culture eventually spits it out.
And many liberal Christians have their own evasions. They imagine the answer is accommodation: soften doctrine, lower demands, apologize for certainty, become as unthreatening as possible. But Europe does not need a gentler irrelevance. It does not need churches that survive by becoming chaplains to post-Christian sentiment. If Christianity in Europe is dying, it is not because it has been too Christian.
In many places, it is because it has not been Christian enough.
https://www.christianpost.com/voices/eur...st-it.html
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
