To paraphrase Mark Twain, “Reports of the death of the Christian Church in Europe have been greatly exaggerated.” In his magnificently researched book, God’s Continent, Philip Jenkins portrays a cautiously optimistic view of the future of religion in general, and the Christian Church in particular, in Europe. This book is the third in his award winning trilogy on emerging 21st century Christianity. While the first two books in his series focused on the global South formerly called the third world, The Next Christendom and The New Faces of Christianity, this new work centers on the least religious continent in the world, Europe.

When most commentators and authors discuss religion in Europe, the center of the conversation is usually the “sickness until death” of the Christian Churches there, or the rise of Islam as a religious force. Jenkins believes rightly that Muslim immigrants and their children have changed the face of Europe, but sees other social and political agendas in the rush to proclaim a “Eurabia” in Europe. In other words, Jenkins does not believe that St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome or Notre-Dame in Paris will soon be replaced by a Mosque!

We are reminded in this book that Europe’s Christian traditions are in decline but far from dead. Poland exports priests, Ireland remains pious and that while the Scandinavian (Lutheran) Churches are quite secular, there is a strong Christian tradition remaining that is especially evident in rural Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. Religious education is still subsidized in anti-clerical France and Protestant England, and the renewal of the European Church is evident in groups with such disparate goals as Cursillo, Opus Dei, Alpha Evangelism Ministry, World Youth Day Movement and the St. Thomas Mass in the state Lutheran Church of Finland. The pilgrimage renewal that is significant in Italy, France and other largely Roman Catholic countries in Europe has never been stronger.

Jenkins believes that the secular media is convinced that Christianity is dying in Europe so any contrary evidence is ignored. The media is also convinced that Islamic immigrants will soon overrun the continent and extend Islam’s influence to the European heartland. Often the media cites the fact that Mohammed is the second largest name given to new born babies in England. However, the growth of Islamic Europe is exaggerated, says Jenkins. It is true that many major cities in France, England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden contain up to 25% first, second or third generation immigrants from the Mideast or Africa. It is also true that the number of Mosques have grown tremendously in the past 30 years. But the facts are that Muslim immigration is largely a European urban movement, and a reducing birth rate amongst these Muslim immigrants means that it is unlikely Islamic populations of European nations will exceed 10% in the next fifty years.

What is unnerving to secular Europeans of the “old stock,” Jenkins believes, is the seriousness that the “New Immigrants” take their religious faith. This piety among many new-Europeans is threatening to the elites and their post-Christian secular agnostic worldview. Muslims really believe in God, and that God should influence their entire lives. That in itself is a threat to the modern European way of life.

Jenkins details carefully the reality of the new immigrants in Europe. He points out that the immigration of Africans, Caribbean Peoples, and Asians into Europe has also included Christians who we would consider religious conservative. Indeed many of the largest Christian congregations in Europe today are African-Caribbean Pentecostal Churches not affiliated with the traditional Christian Churches of Europe.

A careful observer of European politics, Jenkins finds that the challenges the Europeans face will be assimilation of these immigrant communities into the economic mainstream of the continent. Most European nations have no history of immigrant assimilation like the United States, where waves of new Americans (Irish, Northern Europeans, Southern Europeans, Jews, Chinese, Russians, Africans, and Latinos) have become part and parcel of the American fabric for four centuries. To be an “American” has nothing to do with blood or race. That is not the case when German or French or Swedish identity is discussed.

Two other forces play heavily into the analysis that Philip Jenkins has written about in his 289 page written text with 51 pages of end notes and indexes. There is a religious doctrinal pluralism in European Islam. Most western observers have not understood or even tried to understand the variety of Islamic sects. Disagreements between these European Islamic groups are frequently underestimated, with all Muslims lumped together and portrayed as speaking with one voice.

Jenkins also observes a final ironic twist. The same secular forces (government, capitalism, enlightenment thinking, elite education) which have affected (and many would say infected) European Christianity will do its work on Islam in the Europe of the next decades.

He closes with this optimistic prediction about Christian faith and life in Europe:

“Perhaps the best indicator that Christianity is about to expand or revive is a widespread conviction that the religion is doomed or in its closing days...Quite possibly, the current sense of doom surrounding European Christianity will drive a comparable movement in the near future. Death and resurrection are not just fundamental doctrines of Christianity; they represent an historical model of the religion’s structure and development.”

For those of us who care deeply about the religious climates of our European ancestral ethnic homes, God’s Continent is an important and hopeful book.

Thomas A. Skrenes, Bishop