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The decline of Christianity in Europe is not a recent phenomenon, but a trend that dates back as early as the fourteenth-century. According to sociological surveys, 60 to 90 percent of the population in the majority of western European countries still regard themselves as Christians. However, the number of practicing Christians is steadily declining.[1] In 1900, Europe was home to two-thirds of the world Christian population; today the figure is less than quarter, and by 2025, it will be below twenty percent.[2] Now these two statistics do not clearly designate if there are those that do not declare themselves Christians or that membership in churches across the denominations is steadily declining. Either way, the societal structure of Europe has increasingly become secular. The decline can attribute its beginnings to the Renaissance with the secularization of Europe primarily tied to the ideas of the Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution, and the French Revolution. The changes in thought from a Christian perspective and worldview changed to a humanistic worldview, where reason and rationalism took over the reins from religion for the control of society.

Up until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most education and scholarly endeavors revolved around the Church. Universities such as Oxford and Cambridge were leading theological institutions, where today Evangelical thought has very little if no presence within the academic structure of these universities. The Enlightenment ushered in a new way thinking that began to stray away from the philosophical ideas of Christianity to humanistic ideas of individualism and rationalism. During the Enlightenment, people began to elevate science to being the ultimate test for truth.[3] Up until now, the church was the primary authority of truth and social justice. The Western Church ideologically controlled that arts and sciences, bishops meddled in state affairs, the papacy led military campaigns and took and active part in politics.[4] But it now was seen as the very center of decadent corruption, its structure and purpose devoid of spiritual integrity.[5] The authority of the Church was beginning to wane in the aftermath of the Reformation and its influence began to give way to scientific discovery. Much of authority requires obedience for it influence to be maintained. Obedience was necessary for the church to have any influence on society especially since from the very beginning obedience was seen as a central virtue in Christianity. Faith, hope, and love are the highest theological virtues.[6] But these virtues could not be seen separately from the ills that society was suffering, and the church began to shoulder most of the blame. Enlightened adherents distrusted all authority and tradition in matters of intellectual inquiry and believed that truth could be attained only through reason, observation, and experiment.[7] This gave way to the idea that reason is the final authority stripping the Church of that distinction.

The printing press allowed the rapid dissemination of new and often revolutionary ideas throughout Europe.[8] This not only aided the Reformation in allowing for the mass publication and distribution of the Bible, but it also aided the Scientific revolution in allowing the general public to understand the workings of the universe. The Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth-century brought a collapse of the medieval way of thinking which was primarily rooted in Christian ideology.[9] The Scientific Revolution enabled the idea that Scripture could now be refuted as being inerrant and infallible. Once the idea that the Word of God was not exactly “correct” from a humanist perspective, its authority was able to be questioned from a spiritual perspective. The discovery by Copernicus that the Earth is no longer the center of the universe and that the solar system is made of heliocentric orbits around the sun garnered much opposition from the church, primarily from Protestant criticism that saw the literal truth of the Bible as being contaminated.[10] Copernicanism posed a fundamental threat to the entire Christian framework of cosmology, theology, and morality.[11] The years that followed saw constant fighting and rebellion between the Protestant reformers and the Catholic Church. Skirmishes that saw bloody ends led to the instability of the church which was viewed just as oppressive as the government. Its moral high ground was no longer seen as a virtue within society and new alternatives to moral absolutes were sought out and pursued.

The ending of the feudal system garnered much steam with the desires of equal rights among the peasant class and the ending of privilege with the upper class. This was the mantra of the French Revolution. The peasant class which made op 96 percent if the population were unfairly taxed which led to deplorable living conditions and an economic system that was not fairly balanced. The nobility paid little to no taxes and both the nobility and the clergy exploited privileges at the peasant’s expense. They enjoyed decadent living while the peasants suffered horrible economic conditions as the result of an incredibly unfair tax system. Revolution broke out that led to the demise of the monarchy with the execution of Louis XVI. The ending of the monarchial and clerical privileges led to the National Assembly which legalized equality with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. This declaration expressed the liberal goals of the philosophes which was a particular interest of the bourgeoisie and a refutation to the longstanding abuses of the Old Regime, primarily tied to the church.[12] Counter revolutions against the new republic soon followed and the instability it created ushered in a new era for an enlightened despot.

The ideas of the Enlightenment solidified under the rule of Napoleon. The reforming ideas of enlightened despotism appealed to Napoleon. His aim was to preserve the gains of the Revolution such as: equality under the law, promotion of secular education, and the weakening of clerical power, but suppressed political liberty.[13] The reforms of the French Revolution spread throughout the land and the influences of the Enlightenment spread throughout Europe under the rule of Napoleon. Napoleon had launched European-wide social revolution that attacked the privileges of the aristocracy and the clergy. This diffusion of revolutionary institutions weakened the Old Regime irreparably in much of Europe.[14] The legacy of the French Revolution was the transformation from the Old regime to the more modern state which was national, liberal, secular, and rational. Prior to the Revolution, religion was still closely linked to the state. After the implementation of the revolutionary ideas of Enlightenment by Napoleon, European political life became increasingly secular.[15]

The influences of the Church were weakened during the centuries leading up to the nineteenth-century. The long-standing abuses of the clergy, the oppression of the aristocracy, which were closely tied to the Church, and the resented privileges of the upper class fostered the rebellious attitudes of the lower class. The demand for equal rights for all men overshadowed the need for the Church. Questioning authority became the common state of mind and the Church was not viewed with a different perspective from government and its authority was no longer supreme. The ideas of the Enlightenment, such as equal rights and dignity for all humanity, placed new value on individualism which ran counter to the personal identity of the individual that was largely absorbed within the Christian body.[16] Up until the nineteenth-century, basic Christian ideas were taught in school, legitimated by every social institution, promoted by the social elites, reinforced by rights-of-passage, and pervaded every aspect of social life.[17] These ideas that were once so pervasive have been exchanged for a secular point of view, a worldview that puts more reliance on individualism. The changes in thought from a Christian perspective and worldview changed to a humanistic worldview, where reason and rationalism took over the reins from religion for the control of society, thus leading to the decline of Christianity throughout Europe.

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There are many reasons for the decline of Christianity in Europe, and one the main reasons would be the age of knowledge or the Scientific Revolution. There are also a few more reasons for the decline. Empiricism or the knowledge through experience, was brought to light through Francis Bacon. The following are other steps toward the decline of Christianity in Europe; Secularization, Romanticism, Materialism, and Atheism. The decline of Christianity took place in a span of at least a century and beyond to present day.

Francis Bacon from the late 16th century to the early 17th century brought the world the empirical method or empiricism. Bacon considered Christianity as full of false ideas. Bacon came up with four ways of thinking according to him as being false ideas. These four ideas became the stepping stone that led to the decline of Christianity in Europe and other places. First, was the Idol of the tribe, this had to do with not trusting what one sees as truth. Second, is the idols of the cave, which deals with how one was raised as how the world is perceived. Third, idols of the marketplace that deals with language, which according to Bacon does not describe the world. Fourth, idols of the theater that is systems of belief, which is materialistic in thought about the world. With that said the four idols according to Bacon has brought about skepticism, in which has helped turn people away from God.[1]

Two more men of the late 17th and 18th centuries took on the same thoughts as Bacon. These men John Locke and Bishop George Berkeley took the idea of empiricism even further. Locke with his ideas of the mind brought about major issues with skepticism. This brought people even Christens during that time to become unsure of the world around them and what they saw as reality.

This idea that Locke started was called epistemological dualism:

Since the mind, in all its thought and reasoning, hath no other immediate Object

but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident, that our

knowledge is only conversant about them.[2]

After the statement was made by Locke skepticism became a reality to most. Bishop George Berkeley to Locke’s ideas even further, he was more into the perception itself. He made people question whether what they saw was actually a reality. Another big step toward denying Christian thought.[3]

Secularization played another role in the decline of Christianity in Europe. Along with secularization came humanism, and denial of God came with it. Communication was becoming very widespread at this time, and skepticism along with the start of atheism was being propagated through main stream media.[4] With the secularization the state stopped protecting the church and spirituality to protecting the material things of the world. There was an awakening of a natural religion, which turned away from the spiritual as well. The world turned to the material and natural state away from God.[5]

There are five different currencies in secularization; differentiation, rationalization, privatization, pluralization, and individual loss of faith. Differentiation is when the peopled declared the separation of church and state. In doing so the church had no control over governmental issues. Rationalization brought about the church beginning to rationalize everything, and in doing so seeing the world as mere time, space, and matter. Pluralism brought about new religions, which in turn gradually took God out of the picture. Finally, individual loss of faith that meant people found other ways to spend their time other than church. T sum up the secularization churches turned to being separate from everything it stood for.[6]

Romanticism was another problem for Christianity. The idea of romanticism began in France and Germany by the late 18th century. Jean Jacques Rousseau along with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe started the thought of freedom of spirit. The thought of the time included:

A fashionable tendency to frenzy, melancholy, world-weariness, and even self-

Destruction.[7]

According to the romantic style the focus was more on imagination, emotions, intuition, and even passion. There was also a place for spontaneity, going away with moral thought. The style of the romantics was detrimental to Christianity, because morality went out the window along with being one with God. There were different themes of romanticism included libertarianism, nature, lure of the exotic, and the supernatural. Libertarianism dealt with the rights of the individual and disdain for the conventional way of life. When it came to nature, people were drawn to the depths of human nature by comparing to natural surroundings. Lure of the exotic was mainly the intrigue of the supernatural and graveyards including ruins. In reference to the supernatural, people were drawn to things pertaining to the devil, and the fear of their spiritual well-being was not an issue. All of the themes of the romantics took people away from the spiritual wellness that one would have following Christ.[8]

Secularization, Romanticism, Materialism, and Atheism has never fully stopped keeping people from Christ. Modern Europe still is in a decline, and all of the above still plays a role in this declination. One of the main reasons is science mainly in reference to evolution. Because Darwinism has become the main topic in science, and being taught from a young age the Bible to some is fiction. When it comes to education not just the sciences have been effected, so has the use of Bible which has been taken out of the school system. With the Bible taken from schools it seems that society is being brought back to the dark ages with the Biblical illiteracy. The Biblical illiteracy makes it difficult to be properly informed about true doctrine. With the exclusion of scripture in schools more skepticism and young people turning to other means of spiritual awakening.[9]

World wars have made a big impact on the beliefs of the general public. The main issue with war dealt with why a God of love could allow the deaths of many. Since people have questioned Gods role in wars and terror attacks, the media has taken advantage of this. Atheism in the social media feeds the skepticism in society. Main stream media prevents faith from being propagated to the masses. This is where secularism and romanticism comes into play, in other words whatever feels good do it. Materialism is another problem with media, and the keeping up with the Jones mentality. The idea of wanting the best car and the most lavish home, and trying to have it loses sight of Gods true path in life.[10]

In conclusion, there is another problem that the church has is complacency. Church members not being consistent in attendance, and not standing up for what is right. The church has been staying out of moral decisions being made in government, in doing so people including Christians don’t take what the church stands for seriously. Because of the lack of interest and complacency the churches decline in Europe has not bounced back. For this reason, Christians need to start back spreading the Gospel, and bring back true revival. There needs to be a reawakening in the church, one that stands up for what is right and good. Righteousness needs to prevail once again in the minds of God’s people.