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After Christendom: Why Europe Turned Away from the Faith That Built It — Causes, Consequences, and Paths to Renewal – Part 3

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By Oyewole O. Sarumi

In Parts One and Two, we traced how Christian faith, institutions, and the early Fathers shaped Europe’s political architecture and economic culture—from patristic blueprints and medieval monastic economies to Reformation ethics, confessional states, and the slow birth of modern capitalism. This third installment poses a more complex question: How did a continent so profoundly shaped by Christianity become, within a few centuries, the most secular region on earth? Why do parish churches stand empty, sold, or converted to shops and museums? Why do once-dominant confessions struggle to retain the next generation, even as new religious minorities grow and vibrant expressions of Christianity thrive elsewhere?

This is not a lament; it is an inquiry. We aim to examine the multiple revolutions—intellectual, political, social, economic, technological, and moral—that propelled Europe toward a post-Christian self-understanding, and to assess the consequences for civic life, culture, and the European churches themselves. We will also sketch realistic pathways by which Christian communities might serve the common good in a plural, post-Christendom setting. The tone here is analytical, not nostalgic, hopeful, not naïve. As St. Peter counselled a marginal church, “Always be prepared to answer everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have—yet do this with gentleness and respect.” (1 Peter 3:15)

I. From Christendom to Question Mark: A Recap of the Trajectory

Christian ideas, elites, and infrastructures held together the Europe that emerged from the Roman collapse. Patristic theology legitimized rulers while also limiting their power; monastic estates taught Europe to farm, count, and save; canon law disciplined markets and marriages; and cathedrals broadcast a liturgy of meaning across the centuries. The Reformation fractured Western unity, but it did not eject religion from public life; rather, it recalibrated church–state relations and injected powerful ideas about vocation, discipline, and responsibility into the bloodstream of early modern economies. Part Two concluded at Westphalia (1648), where confessional conflicts led to the establishment of the secular state system—even as Europe remained culturally Christian.

The surprise is not that Europe secularized; the surprise is how rapidly it did so in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In much of Western Europe today, weekly worship is rare and self-described non-religion is common; in some countries, a clear majority now say religion is “not important” in their lives. The majority of Western Europeans still identify as Christian, but most are non-practicing, a pattern carefully documented by the Pew Research Centre’s pan-European survey. (Pew Research Center)

II. The Long Preludes: Enlightenment, Nation, and the 19th-Century State

Secularization has many streams. Enlightenment rationalism did not disprove faith, but it organized knowledge differently—through experiment, publicity, and critique—making religion more a matter of choice than fate. The French Revolution’s radical anti-clericalism and the 1905 Law on Separation of Churches and State encoded laïcité in French civic DNA. National integration required uniform schools, conscription, and bureaucracies that increasingly treated religion as a private commitment rather than a public charter.

At the same time, industrialization and urbanization ruptured older parish ecologies. Migrants left villages where church and calendar shaped life for cities where anonymity, factory time, and voluntary association prevailed. The church retained prestige, but its monopoly over meaning eroded as newspapers, museums, and universities formed alternative magisteria. The welfare state assumed pastoral functions—care of the sick, the poor, and the elderly—once dominated by ecclesial institutions, which altered how Europeans encountered Christian compassion in their daily lives.

Social scientists later theorized these shifts. Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart’s “existential security” thesis posits that as life becomes more predictable—through education, healthcare, the rule of law, and social insurance—societies tend to exhibit lower levels of religious practice and salience. Their influential account captures much of Western Europe’s experience after 1945. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

III. The 1960s and the “Age of Authenticity”

If the century between 1850 and 1950 set the stage, the 1960s changed the playbook. Philosopher Charles Taylor describes a cultural turn toward expressive individualism, therapeutic horizons, and what he calls the “immanent frame,” a social space where ultimate questions are commonly approached without reference to transcendence. Religion did not vanish; it was reframed as one option among many within a marketplace of identities and meanings. That reframing—combined with novel sexual ethics, new technologies of reproduction, mass media, and the rapid democratization of higher education—compounded the secularizing momentum, especially among the young. (Harvard University Press)

Notably, Taylor rejects the crude “subtraction story” (modernity minus religion equals progress). He demonstrates how Christian reform movements that sought to moralize daily life, elevate lay discipline, and root out “superstition” also contributed to the creation of the disciplined, buffered self that is at home in secular institutions. In short, secular modernity is not simply the opposite of Europe’s Christian past; it is, in complex ways, its offspring. (Harvard University Press)

IV. Scandals and the Crisis of Trust

Even if macro-forces made Europe more secular, specific ecclesial failures accelerated disaffiliation. Nowhere was this more devastating than in the series of abuse reports that unmasked crimes, cover-ups, and cultures of secrecy. In France, the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (CIASE) concluded in 2021 that large numbers of children had been abused within Church contexts since 1950, with a harrowing account of institutional responses. Whatever the exact figures (which vary by methodology), the moral shock was immense, and public trust suffered accordingly. (ciase.fr)

Germany’s major churches experienced a related trust collapse—with concrete demographic consequences. In 2023, the German bishops’ conference recorded 402,694 formal exits from the Catholic Church, the second-highest figure on record after 2022; Protestant bodies reported similarly high departures. Exits in Germany carry tax implications (church tax), which means these acts are public, deliberate, and often final. (Pillar Catholic, FSSPX News)

These tragedies do not explain Europe’s secularization, but they turbocharged it, especially among younger cohorts already shaped by Taylor’s “age of authenticity.” Hypocrisy is always intolerable; institutional hypocrisy in a culture that prizes transparency is fatal.

V. The Numbers: A Continent that Believes Less, Practices Less, and Belongs Less

A few datapoints illustrate the contours:

  • United Kingdom (England & Wales): In the 2021 Census, “Christian” fell to 46.2%, the first time Christianity did not constitute a majority; the “no religion” category rose to 37.2%, up twelve points from 2011. (Office for National Statistics)
  • Ireland: Still majority Catholic, but trending secular: the 2022 Census reports 69% Catholic identification—down significantly over 20 years—with rising “no religion” and Hindu communities, reflecting both secularization and migration. (Central Statistics Office, The Irish Times)
  • Poland: Long seen as a counter-trend in Europe, Poland shows sharp drops in belief and practice. Surveys and church statistics indicate Sunday Mass attendance among Catholics fell from roughly 37% (2019) to under 30% (2022); the 2021 census identified ~71% as Catholic, far lower than a decade earlier. Explanations include scandal, politicization, and generational change. (Notes From Poland, Wikipedia)
  • Western Europe overall: Pew’s cross-national study found that most self-identified Christians are non-practicing and that majorities in many countries say religion is “not too” or “not at all” important in their lives. A 2025 Pew overview likewise locates many European publics among the least likely worldwide to say religion is “significant.” (Pew Research Center)

These are not isolated anomalies but parts of a coherent pattern: lower belief, lower practice, and weaker institutional belonging across much of Western Europe, with some lag in parts of Central and Eastern Europe and pockets of resilience or revival (more on that below).

VI. Empty, Sold, or Reimagined: The Fate of Europe’s Church Buildings

The cultural visibility of secularization is most striking in real estate. Across countries, churches are being deconsecrated, sold, or re-purposed as housing, libraries, concert venues—and yes, even supermarkets. The Church of England closes around 20–25 church buildings per year, with a formal system to find new uses for them. In the Netherlands, dioceses have announced large-scale closures; the Diocese of Amsterdam indicated in 2022 that approximately 60% of its Catholic churches would need to close within five years. Specialist groups, such as Future for Religious Heritage (FRH), now curate research and legal frameworks for reuse across Europe, while academic centres chronicle the trend. A Belgian case recently made headlines when a church in Ghent was scheduled to be converted into a supermarket, emblematic of broader conversions of secular community functions. (The Church of England, Pillar Catholic, Future for Religious Heritage, stories.kuleuven.be)

To be sure, closures are not uniform and sometimes obscure complex local growth. However, the symbolic force is hard to miss: buildings erected as sacramental centers of everyday life now serve other purposes in a society where the res publica is imagined without reference to the altar.

VII. Explaining the Shift: Ten Interlocking Drivers

No single cause “killed” Christendom in Europe, as the reality is a complex network of interlocking drivers, uneven across regions, confessions, and social classes. The following ten are among the most consequential.

  1. Existential Security & the Welfare State
    Norris and Inglehart’s work correlates robust welfare, universal healthcare, higher education, and the rule of law with lowered religious demand. Western Europe became the textbook case after 1945. When basic contingencies—such as sickness, old age, and unemployment—are buffered by public systems, the functional need for parish-centred mutual aid wanes. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)
  2. The Age of Authenticity
    As Taylor argues, late modern Europeans prize self-expression and choice; inherited identities (including religion) must be chosen to be legitimate. The parish becomes one option among many on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings: football academies, brunch, wellness, and weekend work. (Harvard University Press)
  3. Mass Higher Education and Knowledge Ecologies
    University expansion exposed generations to alternative intellectual authorities (science, critical theory, the arts) and to tools for evaluating received traditions. The result was not atheism by fiat, but fragilized belief—what Taylor calls “cross pressure.”
  4. Media and the Rewiring of Attention
    From television to smartphones, attention habitats have undergone significant changes. Ritual schedules compete with on-demand everything; algorithmic feeds flatten hierarchies of meaning. Local clergy once curated the moral conversation; now a teenager’s catechist is YouTube.
  5. Sexual Revolution and Norm Change
    Shifts in sexual ethics- contraception, cohabitation, divorce, abortion, and later same-sex marriage separated many Europeans’ lived moral worlds from traditional church teaching. Where the dissonance became acute, formal and practical disaffiliation followed.
  6. Scandals and Safeguarding Failures
    The abuse crisis detonated a long-fused bomb. Institutional opacity was corrosive in a culture that equates legitimacy with transparency and accountability, especially in child protection. France’s CIASE report symbolizes a broader reckoning across the continent. (ciase.fr)
  7. Politicization and Culture Wars
    Where churches became aligned with particular parties or ideological agendas, a generation allergic to partisan religion quietly withdrew. In places where ethical debates were framed as winner-take-all, many opted out of the arena.
  8. Religious Pluralism and Migration
    Post-war migration diversified Europe’s religious field, introducing vibrant Islam, Orthodox, Pentecostal, and Hindu communities. Pluralism does not automatically secularize, but it relativizes the local monopoly of historic churches. Demographers project that Europe’s Muslim population will grow modestly but steadily through mid-century, driven by age profiles and fertility rates, even with lower migration, part of a broader diversification of the European religious landscape. (Pew Research Center)
  9. Legal and Institutional Differentiation
    Constitutions, courts, and EU norms entrenched religious freedom and non-establishment, moving Christian faith from the foundation of law to one source among others of public reason. This was often salutary for minorities, but it meant that traditional churches now persuaded rather than presided.
  10. Demography: Low Fertility, Late Marriage, Fewer Baptisms
    Below-replacement fertility and delayed family formation reduce transmission points (home catechesis, school choice). Spain’s recent statistics on baptisms and church weddings, which have steeply declined over the last decade, illustrate the demographic headwinds. (Cadena SER)

These drivers do not all point in the same direction everywhere. Poland’s rapid change differs from Romania’s resilience; Ireland’s trajectory differs from Portugal’s. Still, together they explain the overall picture.

VIII. Not One Europe but Many: Regional Contrasts and Complications

Western Europe is the most secular in belief and practice, with the Nordics and Benelux often at the extreme. The UK’s 2021 census formalized what sociologists already knew: “no religion” is a large and growing identity, while practicing Christians are a small minority. (Office for National Statistics)

Ireland remains majority Catholic but is re-negotiating the church’s social role, with sharp declines in sacramental participation and new religious minorities expanding through migration. (Central Statistics Office, The Irish Times)

Germany is emblematic of exit-by-paperwork, with record withdrawals from both Catholic and Protestant bodies, driven by distrust and a tax system that makes affiliation a fiscal choice. (Pillar Catholic, FSSPX News)

Poland—a post-communist outlier for decades—has seen swift erosion among the young and sustained drops in Mass attendance, amid scandal and political entanglement. (Notes From Poland)

Southern Europe shows hybrid patterns: enduring cultural Catholicism alongside precipitous declines in practice (Spain’s baptisms, Italy’s youth religious salience) and rising “nones,” especially in urban centres. (Cadena SER)

Across the region, Pew’s 2018 Western Europe study and subsequent global work underscore the scale of the shift: the majority of Christians are non-practicing, and the low personal importance of religion relative to most world regions. (Pew Research Center)

IX. “The Church is the People, Not the Buildings”—But Buildings Tell a Story

Converting churches into supermarkets, museums, skate parks, or apartments is not merely an architectural story; it is a moral tale about the use of public space. What a city devotes its most beautiful rooms to says something profound about its self-understanding. The Church of England’s managed closing process (20–25 buildings a year) and the Netherlands’ accelerated consolidation illustrate how heritage, law, and mission collide in the present moment. Organizations like Future for Religious Heritage (FRH) and university initiatives now frame reuse not as capitulation, but as an opportunity to keep sacred spaces at the heart of community life, through culture, care, and memory. (The Church of England, Future for Religious Heritage, stories.kuleuven.be)

X. Consequences: What Europe Gains and What It Risks

1. Gains. Secular settlement brought pluralism, protection for conscience, and civic equality independent of creed. The disentanglement of throne and altar saved the Church from coercive power’s corruptions and minorities from majoritarian religion’s blind spots. Science and criticism purified superstition, compelling the churches to reform.

2. Risks. Yet a purely immanent public square struggles to supply meanings deep enough to sustain sacrifice, solidarity, and hope across generations. If purpose is privatized and everyday ritual dissolves, the social trust that welfare states presuppose may erode. Alexis de Tocqueville warned that democratic materialism can narrow horizons to the “petty and vulgar pleasures” of the self; a generation later, Europe made the arts its chapel. Today, some Europeans speak of a “meaning crisis”, not an argument for establishment, but an invitation to re-ask whether spiritual traditions carry public gifts that secular institutions cannot fully replicate.

XI. What the Churches Can Do: Ten Theses for Post-Christendom

Europe’s churches cannot rewind the clock; Christendom has ended. But the gospel has prospered in minority conditions before. The question is not how to reclaim a monopoly, but how to serve a plural public with humility, confidence, and creativity. Ten theses:

  1. From Power to Presence. Abandon nostalgia for establishment; invest in small, faithful communities that are porous to neighbours and credible in care.
  2. Radical Transparency and Justice. Make safeguarding culture non-negotiable; cooperate with civil authorities; centre survivors; publish data; fund reparations. Trust is a mission.
  3. Catechesis for an Immanent Age. Teach Christianity as a coherent way of life in an “option-rich” culture, integrating doctrine, prayer, and practices of mercy. Explain why the Church teaches what it teaches on contested questions, with patience and intellectual charity (1 Peter 3:15).
  4. Re-imagine Vocations. Re-connect Sunday to Monday. The old Benedictine rhythm—ora et labora—still converts workplaces, households, and civic life into altars.
  5. Beauty as Apologetics. Europe is covered in Christian art. Curate it not as a relic but as an invitation: concerts in the nave and crypt, sacred art residencies, lectures that connect Caravaggio to the Sermon on the Mount.
  6. Hospitals of the Soul. In a mental-health crisis, churches can be “field hospitals” (to borrow Pope Francis’s phrase): companionship for the lonely, bereavement circles, marriage clinics, recovery groups.
  7. Public Theology for a Plural City. Speak Christianly about migration, ecology, technology, and inequality, not as culture war but as service where others trade scorn, model meekness and truth together (Matthew 5:5; Ephesians 4:15).
  8. Digital Evangelization with Integrity. Use the new public square without becoming its captive; prefer long-form depth to outrage; train pastors in media literacy.
  9. Diaspora and Diversity as Gifts. African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European Christians are renewing parishes from Naples to London. Receive them not as guests but as co-authors of Europe’s next Christian chapter.
  10. Spaces that Serve. Where parish footprints exceed congregations, re-use does not mean retreat. Libraries, clinics, food banks, and affordable housing in former church buildings can serve as sacraments of common grace, often preserving worship spaces within mixed-use designs. (Jeremiah 29:7)

None of these strategies guarantees numerical growth. But they re-align the churches with the grain of the gospel in a society that listens most to those who show up with courage and love.

XII. Is the Story Entirely One-Way? Signs of Complexity

The secularization story is powerful, but not a linear one. Even in England, the icon of disaffiliation, the Church of England recently announced a record multi-year investment in ministry and parish support, following some post-pandemic upticks in regular participation (especially among younger men), alongside sustained decline from pre-2019 baselines. The numbers remain modest, but they confirm a larger truth: cultural trends are real; they are not destiny. (Reuters, The Guardian)

At the continental scale, Europe’s religious landscape is also changing by addition as well as subtraction. Muslim communities, and Christian communities shaped by global migration, are growing and re-shaping city neighbourhoods and civic dialogues. Projections vary by migration scenarios, but a modest increase of Europe’s Muslim share by mid-century is widely anticipated—a sign that Europe’s religious future is plural, not empty. (Pew Research Center)

XIII.. A Theological Reading: Salt, Light, and the Long Game

In the New Testament, Christian witness is described less as ruling than as seasoning: “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.” (Matthew 5:13–16) Salt preserves and strengthens what is good; light reveals. Measured by that standard, Europe’s churches have work to do, and they will do it best without craving cultural control. The early Christians did not grow by nostalgia for empire; they formed households of holiness and mercy within the empire’s cities and wounds.

St. Paul’s sermon on the Areopagus offers a posture for a plural Europe: discerning the “unknown god” for the philosophically curious, quoting local poets, and situating Christ’s resurrection within a shared search for meaning (Acts 17:16-34). In a Europe crowded with options, this kind of hospitable, serious, public-facing Christianity can be both minority and missionary.

XIV. Policy and Culture: What States, Cities, and Universities Can Do

Secular democracies need not marginalize religion to protect freedom. Policymakers and civic leaders can:

  • Protect Religious Freedom Evenhandedly. Courts and ministries should apply conscience protections consistently while upholding non-discrimination norms. Universities can host rigorous and respectful debates about the place of religion in everyday life.
  • Partner for the Common Good. Municipalities are already collaborating with faith organizations in addressing homelessness, refugee resettlement, addiction recovery, and elder care. These partnerships should be expanded on transparent, secular-law terms.
  • Steward Religious Heritage. Ministries of culture, bishops’ conferences, and local councils can co-fund adaptive reuse of endangered sacred sites, ensuring ongoing community access and, where viable, a liturgical presence. FRH’s network is a practical resource for good models across countries. (Future for Religious Heritage)

Such steps neither re-establish religion nor expel it; they acknowledge that religious capital is civic capital, and that post-Christendom Europe still draws from Christian wells in law, art, social trust, and a stubborn moral grammar of human dignity.

XV. What Happened—and Why It Matters

What happened is not a single abandonment but a multi-decade disentangling. The church’s public monopoly collapsed as the modern state, economy, and culture matured. The welfare state absorbed pastoral functions, the university absorbed intellectual arbitration, the market absorbed leisure, and the individual absorbed identity. Scandals hastened exits; pluralism reframed expectations; demography dulled the mechanisms of transmission. The result is a Europe where many still tick “Christian” on forms, but far fewer pray, gather, or confess with regularity. Church buildings close (or are re-purposed) as membership and practice fall, especially among the young. (The Church of England, Pillar Catholic, Pew Research Center)

Why it matters is not only a concern for believers. Large, complex societies require reservoirs of trust, moral formation, neighbourly love, and a sense of belonging. Churches are hardly the only sources of these goods, but historically they have been reliable producers. A Europe that forgets how to generate such goods will find its politics hotter, its loneliness deeper, and its social fabric thinner, costs already visible in many places.

XVI. A Post-Secular Possibility?

Sociologist Peter Berger once declared secularization theory dead, observing that the world outside Western Europe remains intensely religious. He later conceded that Europe is the great exception—but exceptions can shift. Even on this continent, “post-secular” moments appear interfaith collaborations on migration and poverty, environmental movements that draw on Christian ecological thought, unexpected shifts among artists and intellectuals, and diaspora renewal in parishes once on the verge of collapse. None of these signals a return to Christendom; it suggests something quieter and, perhaps, more evangelical: Christianity without cultural command, but with cultural depth. (storage.cloversites.com)

Conclusion

When Jesus asks, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Matthew 16:26), He names a permanent European temptation: to mistake material security for fullness. Europe did not abandon Christianity in one dramatic act; it drifted toward an immanent self-sufficiency while stumbling over institutional sins that betrayed the gospel it still half-remembers. Churches, for their part, often confused cultural standing with mission and were slow to reform.

And yet the future is open. The Christian proposal remains: a coherent vision of the human person, forgiveness that does not erase justice, communities where the weak are honoured, and a hope stronger than death. To serve that future, Europe’s churches should trade power for presence, nostalgia for neighbour-love, and anxiety for patient courage. They should learn to be salt and light in cities that no longer assume the creed, trusting that, as before, honest holiness is persuasive.

Part Three ends where the Christian story always returns: to a cross that looked like failure but became the world’s hinge. Europe has changed. The Church can change, too, and return to its first love. If it does, it will not re-create Christendom. It will do something more difficult and more beautiful: bear faithful witness amid plurality and so help Europe remember not only where it came from, but what it is for.

Key data sources referenced

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