Here's an article in US News & World Report on the rise of "aggressive secularism" in Europe but also the possibility of a spiritual renewal among the young.
From the ban on the wearing of visible religious symbols in French public schools to the refusal of the EU to include specific mention of Christianity's influence on Europe's distinctive civilization in its first constitution, a mountain of anecdotal evidence suggests that an aggressive form of secularism--what the British religion writer Karen Armstrong calls "secular fundamentalism" --is afoot in Europe.Numerous analysts suggest that the spreading "Christianophobia" is tied to a Europe-wide spiritual malaise that is pushing the Continent toward broad cultural and economic decline. Others describe a more complicated process, in which--as the last vestiges of established religions are disappearing in various European nations--a new spiritual awakening may be taking place.
[M]any say that Christianophobia is only part of the contemporary story. They point to a widespread upsurge of nonhierarchical, populist Christian movements across Europe and into other continents, claiming hundreds of thousands of mainly youngish followers who seek ways of making Christian beliefs real in their lives and work. While the Community of Sant'Egidio, started by Roman high school students in the late 1960s, devotes itself to charity, social justice, and peace (working as mediators to bring an end to Mozambique's civil strife, for example), Communion and Liberation, founded 50 years ago by Milanese priest Luigi Giussani, a theologian turned high school teacher, focuses on what one of the movement's followers, Paolo Carozza, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, calls "fundamental questions: What does it mean to be human? What does Christianity have to do with this humanity?"
In addition to signs of a spiritual reawakening, the long view of history puts today's European Christianophobia in clearer perspective. Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, fought hard but unsuccessfully for mention of Christianity in the EU constitution. He is still troubled by the Buttiglione affair and by the Spanish parliament's moves toward legalizing gay marriage. But standing in the Vatican on a recent spring day, Martino asked: "Those Roman emperors who wanted to get rid of us, where are they today? And Napoleon, he didn't like us either. And where is Napoleon today?"
The jury of history will take some time to render its verdict. But one prudent strategy from this side of the Atlantic would be to make our pilgrimages to the roots of our civilization sooner rather than later when it might all be swept away by apathy, decay and ascendant Islamism.
Related:
• Religious antipathy
• The church, now and to come