Their parents lived through the cold war; their grandparents survived the Nazis. A new generation of Europeans is enjoying a time of unprecedented peace unheard of in two millennia. But a spiritual war is raging on the ground where the apostles preached and the Reformers were martyred.

Rocked by fiercely secular governments, its citizens also live with the threat of radical Islam in the aftermath of September 11. The days of Christianity as the ‘official’ religion in most countries are gone. In modern-day Europe, the rich history of the gospel is being rewritten or deliberately forgotten.

Europe is facing a vast multi-ethnic, multi-spiritual mission field. As Pope John Paul II put it in 2000, Europe has suffered the ‘loss’ of its ‘Christian memory and heritage, accompanied by a kind of practical agnosticism and religious indifference whereby many Europeans give the impression of living without spiritual roots’.

In contrast, Christianity has exploded in the developing world in the past 50 years. Africa is the new centre of Christendom. But the countries that fostered the Reformation are poor shadows of themselves. Churches have become tourist traps - or even sold off altogether and converted into pubs or hotels. Bible knowledge has shrunk to Christmas carols and The Da Vinci Code. An American Baptist missionary website states that ‘missiologists compare Europe to the Muslim-held Middle East when it comes to responsiveness to the gospel’.

Operation World estimates that fewer than 1 in 10 Europeans are regular churchgoers. The number of evangelicals in the majority of European nations is less than 0.2 per cent. While there are officially 520 million Christians in Europe, much of Western Europe is post-Christian and needs to be evangelised again. The harvest is plentiful but the workers are too few.

With the flood of poor Islamic migrants following the integration of the European Union (EU), Europe is rife with tensions. The problems are especially prevalent in wealthier Protestant countries, such as the UK and Germany. In 2006, Europeans are still reeling from the carnage of the London and Madrid bombings.

Religious persecution now abounds. In France outward religious symbols such as the Muslim hijab and the Christian cross have been banned from schools. In Spain, Portugal and Slovenia evangelical churches are viewed with deep suspicion and labelled as cults. Several European countries outlaw cults, resulting in the suffering of many ordinary Christians in legitimate churches. A declaration issued at a recent ecumenical convention in Germany said Bible-believing Christians of all denominations are subjected to suppressive intolerance in Europe.

In a rare joint statement last month, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and Catholic leader Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor railed against what they called the ‘intolerant public atheism’ of public life. They say faith and belief have never been so important or badly misunderstood and attacked arguments that the rising prominence of religion is a danger to society.

“Many secularist commentators argue that the growing role of faith in society represents a dangerous development,” they said. “However, they fail to recognise that public atheism is itself an intolerant faith position.”

They argued that the secular public square, properly understood, is a Christian legacy and one that requires an ongoing Christian presence.

This is clearly not the position taken by the EU, in perhaps the strongest sign that Christianity is at its weakest point in history in church-state relations. Despite strong protests from Christian leaders, including the late Pope John Paul II, Europe’s governing body elected to exclude Europe’s Christian heritage from its rewritten constitution, fearing that it would upset Muslims and Jews. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to revisit the religious component of the constitution when Germany takes on the rotating presidency next year.

Veneer of Christendom

While it is widely reported that Christianity is dying in Europe, it is not only the Catholic Church that is on its knees but also the established Protestant and Orthodox churches, says the Australian Director of European Christian Mission (ECM), Romeo Dinale.

“Overall you have to agree with that opinion,” Mr Dinale said. “Established churches are dead in Europe. It’s [now] the era of the missionary endeavour rather than the established churches carrying out the Great Commission.”

Mr Dinale, a former missionary in Italy and member of St James, Croydon, said the late Pope’s opinion that Europe has lost the gospel has been ‘enormously helpful’ in giving legitimacy to foreign missionaries seeking to enter Europe – especially those who face criticism that there is no need to be evangelising Roman Catholics.

“We’re not evangelising Roman Catholics,” he said. “We’re evangelising people who think they’re Roman Catholic – whose adherence to Catholic dogma and participation in the church are minimal to non-existent.”

In Italy 85 per cent of the population identify as Roman Catholic but only a handful attend church.

Mr Dinale said Europeans are woefully ignorant of the person of Jesus Christ despite centuries of the presence of Christianity.

“For most Europeans, Catholic or Protestant, their religion is a cultural veneer,” Mr Dinale said. “There is not a widespread understanding of the supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ or his person. The essence of the gospel has never really been put out there.”

While Mr Dinale says there were godly Catholic men among the early church fathers, such as Augustine, Catholic Europe has ended up with another gospel.
“The teaching of Jesus within Catholicism has gone largely to two poles – one is that he’s presented as a Saviour who died but there’s no explanation as to why he died, or he’s presented as a babe in arms,” he said.

Romeo Dinale says prayer is key for believers who seek a revitalisation of gospel ministry.

“There is no greater way of supporting missionaries and those in Europe whom they are seeking to reach for Christ than by fervent struggle in prayer,” he said.

The huge crowds of mourners who flocked to Vatican City following the death of Pope John Paul II shown on TV screens around the world temporarily hid the reality of a dying church. According to The Guardian, by the end of the papacy of the new pope Benedict XVI, “Europe may again be as un-Christian as it was when St Benedict, one of the patron saints of Europe, founded his pioneering monastic order, the Benedictines, 15 centuries ago”.

As nominal Christianity declines and traditional churches cope with the loss of the younger generation, analysts predict that Christian profession in Europe will dramatically decline over coming two decades. In 2025, it is estimated Europe will account for only one-fifth of global Christianity, with Africa and Latin America accounting for half.

But it’s not all bad news, especially for evangelicals. Operation World records the evangelical presence in mainline denominations is increasing.
Another trend is the spirituality of Europe’s young people. Many have no ties to established churches but seek a spiritual connection. “An increase in religion among youth is very clear,” French sociologist Yves Lambert told Time magazine.

This is happening through internet chatrooms and blogs, such as that of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) which has been developed to help with communication across its widely dispersed membership. In Slovenia, IFES reports that the internet blogs have been vital to the development of the movement as it seeks to work cooperatively despite the tiny number of evangelicals across the country, the absence of student campuses and the high cost of starting social clubs at universities.

Training local believers

In 2000 for the first time missionaries from the non-Western world edged past missionaries from the Western world by two per cent. As a result, former colonial nations that owe their Christian heritage to Europe, such as Brazil and Australia, are coming to re-evangelise the mission fields of Northern and Southern Europe and the former Eastern bloc.

Those who are able to obtain a visa (many experience difficulties, especially in France) embark on concentrated periods of language learning with the aim of training young nationals in full-time ministry.

CMS-NSW General Secretary John Bales told Southern Cross that CMS has felt called to concentrate on student ministry in Europe because it sees campuses as a strategic field for the gospel to re-invigorate Christian witness. It has been doing so since the early 1990s.

“In student ministry our missionaries in Latin America, Japan and Europe are experiencing both open and closed doors – for example in the south of France Alison Colliss is being allowed to make tentative steps into schools ministry even though the government is firmly opposed to proselytising in educational institutions,” Mr Bales said.

“While in the capital, Paris, [missionaries] Xavier and Libby Lukins have just had a door slammed in their face by a local council’s refusal to hear their application to build a new church for their congregation, largely made up of uni students.”

Former Sydney Anglicans Matthew and Louise George now minister in Portugal and say much prayer is needed for the next generation of church leaders.

“There is a lot of pressure on young people and some gifted young leaders are thinking of leaving the country just to get work,” Mrs George said. “There are still 35 regions in the country without an evangelical church, and very few churches have a full-time minister. There are very few Portuguese willing to go into ministry.

“The factors are complex – lack of financial security being the main one. However, it is our firm conviction that few Portuguese young people are being solidly fed from good Bible teaching.”

The missionaries have tapped into the hugely popular Da Vinci Code and used it as an evangelistic tool in much of Europe as it has been in Australia and across the world. It is an ironic twist that churches are using secular fiction to introduce Europeans to the claims of the Bible upon which their societies were founded.

The runaway success of The Da Vinci Code is perhaps an example of what Archbishop Williams and Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor call a ‘moment of perplexity’ – a lack of resources to confront the most important questions in this life.

“As a society,” they argue, “we must decide how we will respond to this moment of collective confusion – can we seek to go on living as before?”

The Italian job

The Lubbocks

CMS missionaries Andrew and Sarah Lubbock minister among Italian university students. SC asks what ministry is like now in the birthplace of Christendom.

What challenges do you face in sharing the gospel message with Italians?

Perhaps the greatest challenge is that Christianity in Italy is, for the larger part, a centuries-old cultural version. Even today, the high level integration of church and Italian life means great difficulty in attracting people to and engaging them over the distinctives of Jesus Christ. The pervasiveness of the Church is observable in the constant presence of church-influenced programs on the principal Italian television channel, RAI 1.

On campus this can produce the following challenges: there is a strong anti-church, anti-institution sentiment; there are many ingrained preconceptions and wrong ideas about Jesus Christ and what it means to be His follower; and there is apathy and gross ignorance concerning the centrality of Christ and His death on the cross.

[The Lubbocks recently carried out a series of survey interviews in two faculties of Florence University.]

When respondents we interviewed were asked about Christianity, their understanding of it and its connection to their lives, none of them mentioned anything to do with the Bible or Jesus Christ. 

Do you detect an openness to spiritual issues among university students?

In our experience with Australian students, we would say that there is a greater willingness amongst Italian students to talk about spiritual matters. However, this willingness to talk is balanced by the fact that very few are open to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christian leaders and the media are labelling Europe as Post-Christian. Do you think this is an accurate reflection of Christianity in Italy?

There are conflicting signs. Church attendance in Italy is low. Eight out of 100 Italians attend mass on any given Sunday. However the social impact of the church could be said to be significant while the spiritual impact is low, if not withering.

First Aboriginal Bible

A group of Aboriginal Christians in the Northern Territory and three missionaries are set to complete a challenge of biblical proportions: the translation of the entire Old Testament.

With support from Wycliffe Australia, the Bible Society in Australia, the Anglican Diocese of the NT, and several church agencies, the Kriol Bible Translation Project will lead to the first complete Bible in an Australian indigenous language.

Kriol, a language spoken by thousands of Aboriginal people in northern and north-western Australia, has developed from ‘pidgin English’. Many Aboriginal people living in the region between Katherine, the Roper River and the southern Gulf of Carpentaria and the Kimberley in Western Australia speak Kriol as a first language.

Many more Aboriginals in other parts of the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia speak Kriol as a second or third language.

Kriol translators have no doubt about the value of their work: “When I read the Kriol Baibul, it makes me very happy, and I know God is there too,” said Michael Millar from Minyerri.

Mission out of Africa

Jonathan and Olisarali’s story

Jonathan Geddes, a vet originally from Werribee Baptist, joined a SIM team heading to witness to the Mursi in 1990, then an unreached group in Ethiopia.

Initially, none of the Mursi had any interest in literacy – or the Gospel. During 1997 a young man named Olisarali, whose cattle Jonathan had treated, asked how ‘writing’ worked.

Jonathan met daily with Olisarali until, after ten weeks, Olisarali’s father, a leader among the Mursi, decided the skill was worthless. Olisarali was sent off to herd their cattle in another area.

It seemed the relationship would end. But soon Jonathan began receiving notes from Olisarali. The first notes were quite short – about sick cattle. Jonathan responded. Olisarali then said the other cattle-herders were throwing cow dung at him for his interest in writing.

After months of rejection, the others began to see that written notes communicated more accurately than their word-of-mouth messages. Soon their enthusiasm for writing knew no bounds.

After working with Jonathan to translate Bible verses into the Mursi language, in early 1998 Olisarali decided to trust the Lord. He immediately sought out his friends to share the Good News. Eventually a church was planted and strengthened and now the Mursi church is sending witnesses out to neighbouring regions.

SIM is facilitating churches in Africa and South America to ‘send out missionaries to the ends of the earth’, says Dr Omar Djoeandy, Executive Director of SIM Australia.

“Today SIM missionaries from Nigeria, Ethiopia and Kenya are serving in Sudan and others from Guatemala and Ecuador are witnessing in India.”

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