Vol. 31, No. 3 July 2007 Europe: Christendom Graveyard or Christian Laboratory? hortly before his election as Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph in his essay “Can Europe Be Saved?”—an extended review of SCardinal Ratzinger published a pithy little volume in Jenkins’s just-published God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Italian, Europa: I suoi fondamenti oggi e domani (Edizioni San Paolo, Europe’s Religious Crisis (Oxford Univ. Press, 2007). 2004). Recently translated into English under the title Europe Today Christendom from its earliest days found it impractical to and Tomorrow (Ignatius Press, 2007), the book wistfully recalls follow the ways of Jesus—to actually reflect the mind of Christ—as demonstrated by its violent politics, aggressive and self-centered economics, and fierce militarism. As Alan Kreider points out in his essay on violence and mission in the fourth and fifth cen- Continued next page On Page 115 Godless Europe? Philip Jenkins 121 Can Europe Be Saved? A Review Essay Lamin Sanneh 125 Violence and Mission in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries: Lessons for Today Alan Kreider 128 Paul G. Hiebert, 1932–2007 Robert Eric Frykenberg 134 My Pilgrimage in Mission Herb Friesen 136 The Legacy of Pierre Claverie the continent’s Christendom heritage and argues that, without Jean-Jacques Pérennès, O.P. a return to its spiritual foundations, Europe’s moral and political disintegration is inevitable. 140 Noteworthy In his lead article Philip Jenkins argues that while the col- 142 The Legacy of Olav Guttorm Myklebust lapse of mainstream European religion may well mark the death Aasulv Lande of Christendom, closer scrutiny suggests that instead we may be 148 The Legacy of Ion Keith-Falconer witnessing a prolonged and growingly uncomfortable gestation, a David D. Grafton necessary prelude, that could birth spiritual regeneration, though 153 Book Reviews perhaps not in a wholly familiar form. Is Christendom being born again, so to speak, to a faith that combines Christian beliefs with 166 Dissertation Notices Christian behavior? This hopeful idea is echoed by Lamin Sanneh 168 Book Notes turies, Christendom—the conjunction of self-serving state and that we humans need to be saved, above all, from ourselves. The ostensibly self-giving church—almost at once succumbed to the Bible offers no scheme for rescue from outside enemies, but it has use of both social and military compulsions in the cause of its much to say about the enemy within. Such a rescue could not mission efforts. Christendom constructed an ethic that permit- come too soon for both Christendom and its Islamic nemesis. ted, applauded, and at times compelled killing in Jesus’ name. Old Christendom was violent, and powerful neo-Christen- Today, the armies of powerful but anxious neo-Christendom dom still prefers violence as an effective means of insisting that likewise launch rockets, scatter bombs, and demolish cities in its will be done on earth. While old Christendom, since World piously rationalized causes. War II, has enjoyed a relative moratorium on war, time and cir- What, then, does Europe—or, for that matter, its giant neo- cumstance will doubtless change that situation, perhaps in the Christendom offspring—need to be saved from? As Ratzinger not-too-distant future. As for neo-Christendom, it is dishearten- rightly argues, it needs to be saved from cultural and spiritual ing to observe how utterly reliant on violence and its terrible amnesia, from the self-inflicted partial lobotomy that has removed instruments this great society and its institutions have become. the memory of its Christendom past. Europe has lost its way. As Commanding 43 percent of the global trafficking in weapons, any traveler knows, to be “lost” makes arrival at the desired des- operating out of more than 700 military bases scattered across tination a matter of implausible chance. Is it reasonable to think the globe, and with virtually every state somehow benefiting that Europe might traverse the present and arrive at a hopeful from the weapons trade, there appears to be no way out. Neo- future if it rejects its memory of where it has recently been? Christendom is no mere victim, but the primary beneficiary, of But further troubling questions arise. If it be granted that a violence around the world. people is defined primarily by shared memory, does it follow that Twenty years ago in this journal, one of the wisest Christian mere recollection of its Christendom past will be sufficient for leaders of his generation posed this question: “Suppose instead the salvation of Europe? What if Europe has never been “saved” of trying to understand the Gospel from the point of view of in any Gospel sense of that word? (Nonconformists can make a our culture, we tried to understand our culture from the point case for this conclusion.) What if the real clash of civilizations, of view of the Gospel?” (Lesslie Newbigin, “Can the West Be from a strictly Gospel point of view, is not and has never been Converted?” INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH 11, between Islam and the West but between self-serving states and no. 1 [January 1987]: 5). The way we choose to answer this ques- followers of the self-giving Christ within their borders? tion may contain the key to one of the most important concerns Perhaps, even with the accelerating metamorphosis of the of our time: Can Europe be saved? continent’s conspicuously proud monuments to human power, —Jonathan J. Bonk architectural ingenuity, and bygone devotion into mosques, mu- seums, markets, and upscale apartments, Europe might embrace Front cover: Bishop Adhemar of le Puy, with mitre and armor, outside some kind of unembarrassed belief in Christ, the Savior of the Antioch, during the First Crusade. From William of Tyre, History of the world. After all, the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures teach us Crusades (France, between 1250 and 1259). Courtesy of the British Library. INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH Established 1950 by R. Pierce Beaver as Occasional Bulletin from the Missionary Research Library. Named Occasional Bulletin of Missionary Research in 1977. Renamed INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH in 1981. Published quarterly in January, April, July, and October by the OVERSEAS MINISTRIES STUDY CENTER, 490 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, U.S.A. (203) 624-6672 • Fax (203) 865-2857 • [email protected] • www.OMSC.org/ibmr.html Editor Contributing Editors Jonathan J. Bonk Catalino G. Arévalo, S.J. Philip Jenkins Gary B. McGee Brian Stanley Associate Editor David B. Barrett Daniel Jeyaraj Mary Motte, F.M.M. Charles R. Taber Dwight P. Baker Daniel H. Bays Jan A. B. Jongeneel C. René Padilla Tite Tiénou Assistant Editor Stephen B. Bevans, S.V.D. Sebastian Karotemprel, S.D.B. James M. Phillips Ruth A. Tucker Craig A. Noll Samuel Escobar David A. Kerr Dana L. Robert Desmond Tutu Lamin Sanneh Managing Editor John F. Gorski, M.M. Graham Kings Andrew F. Walls Wilbert R. Shenk Daniel J. Nicholas Darrell L. Guder Anne-Marie Kool Anastasios Yannoulatos Senior Contributing Editors Books for review and correspondence regarding editorial matters should be addressed to the editors. Manuscripts Gerald H. Anderson unaccompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope (or international postal coupons) will not be returned. Opinions Robert T. 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Periodicals postage paid at New Haven, CT. (ISSN 0272-6122) 114 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 31, No. 3 Godless Europe? Philip Jenkins hen I tell colleagues that my most recent work is on very important role” in their lives, while the U.S. figure in 2002 Wreligion in modern Europe, the inevitable joking reply was about 60 percent. The average figure for Europeans was is, “It must be a very short book!” Comments of this sort become 21 percent, with national variations. The figure for Italy was 27 all the more acute when I say that I am studying the state of percent, Germany 21 percent, and France and the Czech Republic contemporary Christianity because, as everyone knows, the 11 percent.