Europe, Christianized via forced conversion of its pre-Christian pagan natives through bloodshed and cruelty in the Middle Ages, is de-Christianizing today -- thanks to science and rational and humanistic thinking. But it is also helping create room for Islam to come forward to occupy the vacuum, which could be catastrophic.
Christianization of Europe
Before discussing the recent development of de-Christianization of Europe, a few words should be said about its Christianization. The religion called Christianity did not originate in Europe and before Christianization, the European people used to follow their indigenous faiths, now being referred as paganism. Later on, mass conversion of these people to Christianity, by coercion and torture, the Christian Europe came into being. In this context, one may recall the conversion of people by Charlemagne, King of the Franks. He forcibly Christianized the Saxons by way of warfare and law upon conquest. An example may be cited in this regard for understanding the ferocity of the process. In 782, mass massacre of Saxons was committed at Verden, where Charlemagne reportedly had massacred 4,500 captive Saxons due to their refusal to convert to Christianity. At the same time, a law was imposed in 785 which prescribed death to those Saxons, who refused to embrace Christianity. At the same time, ancient holy sites were destroyed or converted to Christian churches, indigenous pagan gods were demonized, and traditional religious practices were condemned as witchcraft and even criminalized.
In fact, Christianization of Europe gained momentum when the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great embraced Christianity in 312. But in early stage of Christianization, even after the conversion of Constantine, it was a tolerant religion. In fact, Emperor Constantine and his co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed tolerance of all religions throughout the Empire.
But the situation changed greatly after 380, when Rome was declared a Christian Empire by Theodosius and Christianity was declared the state religion of the Empire. At the same time, the edict of Thessalonica, laws were passed against pagan practices over the course of the following years. Many of the ancient pagan temples were subsequently defiled, sacked, and destroyed, or converted into Christian sites. Subsequently, Theodosius made the public expression of the ancient or indigenous faiths illegal, bringing an end to the era of religious toleration decisively. It should also be mentioned here that, during the first wave of Christianization, only the urban people were converted and it took several centuries to convert the unwilling rural people by force and hence to turn the entire Europe into a Christian continent.
Today, it is more or less known across the world that Islam is not a religion but an autocratic imperialist political ideology. Its aim is to turn the entire world into an Islamic Empire. In a similar manner, Christianity had a similar pattern of progression and propagation in the past, and even today it seeks mass conversion of people to Christianity in order to create a Christian world. At the root, Christianity, somewhat like Islam and Judaism, is also hateful of other religions and their followers.
Evidently the Christian Europe came into being via forced conversion of its pre-Christian paganic native heathens through bloodshed and cruelty.
De-Christianization of Europe
With the advent of Enlightenment in the 19th century, which a taming of Christian terror and ferocity, Europe embarked on a process of de-Christianization. It has accelerated in recent decades. Today most of the people don’t go to church anymore. Abandoned by Christian devotees, Muslims are purchasing those churches and turning them into mosques. Alongside Muslims, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) is also buying those abandoned churches and converting them into temples of Lord Krishna. These people, who have lost their faith in Christianity, generally claim to be atheists, or have no religion. Some scholars believe that this is the outcome of the propagation of atheist philosophies mainly by Nietzsche and then by Karl Marx. But the advancement of science is also probably a big reason for the de-Christianization of Europe. When Children are fed with scientific, rational and humanistic thinking in European schools, it becomes impossible for them to believe in the Biblical theory of creation ex-nihilo or creation of the Universe in 6 days some 6000 years ago etc. against evolution and other scientific truths. Even Pope John Paul II accepted Darwin’s theory of evolution in 1997.
It is good news that science, in conjunction with rational and humanistic thinking, is de-Christianizing Europe (although gaining momentum elsewhere in the third world). But it also appears that this de-Christianization is helping create room for Islam to come forward to occupy the vacuum, which could be catastrophic. We hope to discuss it in the next article.
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