O Father, where art Thou?

Christianity is becoming a minority faith in Europe, as church attendance falls, the clergy ages, and scandals and harsh doctrine drive people away. But the faith is reappearing — and thriving — in all sorts of unexpected places. A search for God in Europe, 2003

Follow the ancient pilgrims' trail through the plains of central France and you'll come upon a vision of soaring spires and flying buttresses that sail above the fields like a medieval mother ship. The 13th century Chartres Cathedral is a relic of an era when bishops crowned kings and kings crowned conquests by building monuments to their faith. To Roman Catholics, the cathedral — which has burned down and been rebuilt several times over the centuries — has always been a sacred place. Since the 9th century it has been the home of the Veil of the Virgin Mary, a long piece of silk said to have been worn by Mary when she gave birth to Jesus. It has a famed labyrinth, a 262-m winding stone path that pilgrims used to trace on their knees. Its 172 stained-glass windows use every rainbow color to tell Biblical stories from Adam and Eve to the Revelation of John. Naturally, "there is a tendency to visit the cathedral like one visits a museum," says Marie-Josèphe Deboos, head of the church's welcome center. "But this is not a museum. It is a living place, a religious community."
Tell that to those who treat Chartres Cathedral as if it were a satellite gallery of the Louvre, just another stop on the Grand Tour of Europe. The disembodied voice that announces each hour on the hour that "this is a place of prayer" seems to be talking to himself. And Malcolm Miller, who has guided tourists around the cathedral for more than 40 years, can't help but catalog the "vulgarity" of the visitors: the woman who asked what he meant by the terms Old Testament and New Testament; the one who let her dog drink the holy water; the couple — he shirtless, she in a bikini — who arrived on a feast day, strode up to the altar and took a flash photo of the bishop, mid-Mass. Look around and play your own game of Spot the Vulgarians; how about the folks at the back, pumping euros into the machine that spits out "official" Chartres coins?
In its ancient glory and modern angst, Chartres is strangely emblematic of European Christianity right now. This church mirrors the church — the institutions of the faith, whether Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox or independent. It is caught between history and modernity: filled with the few blazingly faithful and the many who feel a faint, indescribable pull; a huge, almost forbidding presence that is nearly always half-empty inside; a place of shadows and more shadows, with the occasional shaft of bright, brilliant light. In 1966, a TIME cover story pondered the fate of Christianity and asked, is god dead? The magazine wasn't the first to pose the question — theologians have lamented society's secularization for centuries — nor would it be the last. He's still not dead, but these days in Europe, He's not always in the same old places. So it's worth asking: Where has God — and Christian faith — gone?
The institutions of Christianity, of course, have long been in decline, but the consensus is that the pace has been quickening. "Parish life is essentially dead," admits a senior Vatican official. Church attendance has dwindled by more than 30% in Britain since 1980. Over the same period, the percentage of the population claiming membership in a religious denomination has dropped more than 20% in Belgium, 18% in the Netherlands and 16% in France. Christianity remains Europe's main religion, with about 550 million adherents. But the number of Europeans who identify as Catholic — by far the biggest denomination on the Continent — has fallen by more than a third since 1978.
At times, the church has been its own worst enemy — backing Franco's brutal regime in Spain (something it still hasn't apologized for) and stonewalling the Irish pedophilia scandals of recent years. But even before these revelations, the church "was an oppressive force," says Willie Walsh, the Bishop of Killaloe, who went on a millennial pilgrimage of reconciliation in 1999. "It was judgmental and placed too much emphasis on a God who was very much to be feared."
What may be new, however, is that the Christian establishment now sees and accepts itself as a minority force — an underdog, where in centuries past it literally ruled Europe. "Churches have always gone through periods when their influence is greater and periods when it was less. Now we are down," says German historian Jobst Schöne, a bishop in the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church. "Christianity will be a minority. Nobody should close his eyes to that fact."
In all of Ireland, just one Jesuit priest — Tony O'Riordan from County Cork — will be ordained this year. At least he believes in God; last week, the Church of Denmark suspended a pastor after he told a newspaper that God doesn't exist. That man may want to consider a career change, but he's not alone in breaking with religious traditions. According to the Third Wave of the European Values Study, a report by Tilburg University in the Netherlands that will be released to the public in July, only in Ireland, Malta and Poland do more than half the people go to church weekly. More than half of those polled in France, Britain, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands said that religion is not important to them.
Governments are severing official ties to the faith that has been inextricably linked with European history since the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in the 4th century. This week the European Union is debating a draft constitution that nods at the "spiritual impulse" in Europe's "heritage" but makes no mention of God or Christianity — despite the best lobbying efforts of Pope John Paul II. Most European countries no longer have state religions, and there's pressure to disestablish in Britain and Norway, two that still do. The crucifix has long since been taken down from public schoolhouse walls; today's argument is about whether teachers — or students — should be allowed to wear the Muslim veil. That's a reminder that Europe has good reasons to make the Christian God a little harder to find. In a pluralist society that takes pains not to exclude any religion or culture — and now includes more than 37 million Muslims — the days of Christianity as the "official" religion should be over.
It may sound strange to say, but in some ways Europe's faith has survived the church. While the Continent may be more secular than ever, God hasn't gone away for everyone. Many Europeans, able to distinguish between the message and its flawed human messengers, still find Him where they always have — in church. And many others who don't attend say they still believe in God and in the importance of religion, especially at life's key moments. Faith is more private, more personal, which means it may be harder to find and often more at odds with Christian orthodoxy. But in some places — among immigrants and youth — it is thriving and even growing.
The same Third Wave survey that shows a lack of interest in religion among half of Europe also shows enduring belief in God and some of faith's trappings. In all but a handful of countries, more than two-thirds of people believe in God. In all except the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, more than 70% of respondents said that a religious service is important at death; the numbers were slightly lower for marriage. This clear "yearning for something beyond" has led to what Exeter University sociologist Grace Davie calls "a funny mixture of what we have in modern Europe, which is still a religious sensibility, but a loss of the tradition and the knowledge base." Your faith may not look like your grandmother's. But "this is not the end of Christianity at all," says theologian Hans Küng. "I have hope."
He points to last month's Ecumenical Church Day in Berlin, which actually lasted five. On the last day, more than 200,000 gathered in front of the Reichstag for Germany's largest ecumenical service ever. There were traditional hymns as well as contemporary choruses, and readings in Polish, Arabic and Swahili. A sea of worshippers waved orange scarves, and bowls of water from the Reichstag's fountain were passed to symbolize baptism. It was a fitting end to an event that had seen thousands crowd into seminars, workshops and concerts. Says Küng: "When 7,000 people attended just to hear me answer the question, 'Why be a Christian today?' you cannot be a pessimist."

GOD HAS GONE PRIVATE
Leaving God out of the E.U. constitution, says Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Poland's first postcommunist Prime Minister, is like "someone cutting the Cathedral of Notre Dame out of a Paris album." Mazowiecki co-authored the preamble to his country's 1997 constitution, which included mention of God. "The influence of Christianity on shaping the face of Europe was so enormous that one used simply to speak of Western civilization as Christian civilization."
Key words: used to. Where popes and cardinals once usurped the authority of kings, and kings established churches to suit their own needs, today the trend is to weaken whatever mild church-state connections still exist. In 2000, Sweden disestablished its state church in 2000, eliminating most of the denomination's legal and fiscal advantages. Norway has convened a commission to draft an action plan for loosening ties by 2005. And Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, has voiced support for the eventual disestablishment of the Church of England.
The exclusion of God from the affairs of state makes sense to many Christians. "This is not a theocracy, for God's sake," says British Liberal Democrat M.E.P. Andrew Duff. "I am concerned about the spiritual state of Europe, but we can't solve that in the constitution. Prayer is a much better answer." Duff's call for public inaction and private action reflects Europe's reality. Both at the national and individual levels, religion is going private. Churches across Europe are boarding up — or being turned into pubs, homes, even supermarkets. Citizens, like states, are rethinking their relationships with clergy and fashioning their own relationships with God. Says Ján Suchán, a Catholic priest in Slovakia who hosts a popular radio show: "The more independent people become, the less they need someone to lead them by the hand." French Orthodox theologian Olivier Clément terms this a "quest for liberty of the spirit." He predicts that "at the end of this path will open a new age of Christianity."
Truth is, it may already have begun. Even in Eastern Europe, where religion has enjoyed a postcommunist resurgence and the church has eagerly claimed the stature it lacked in decades past, its elevation has come with a diminution of respect for the Christian hierarchy. People are choosing to fend for themselves. Church leaders "call on us to believe and be led in faith by them, but I doubt they have that faith themselves," says Galina Zubritskaya, 48, a Moscow translator. "When I do come to a church, I avoid making contact with the clergy," whom most Russians see as tarnished by their involvement in shadowy business practices. "The important thing for me is to have God in my heart."

GOD IS AMONG THE IMMIGRANTS
As dusk falls on a Tuesday, La Courneuve, a working-class suburb of Paris, is quiet. But the late-day stillness is pierced by a rousing chorus — "Praise be to you, O Lord!" — and shouts of "Hallelujah!" that bounce off the low ceilings and burst out of the open windows of the Parole de Foi (Word of Faith) church. Undeterred by a transport strike, 200 people — dressed in their Tuesday best, which is traditional African garb for some, neat shirts or tidy dresses for others — have made it to this evening prayer meeting at the Evangelical church, which meets on the second floor of a paint factory. Voices and hands raised to heaven, they worship their God. The electricity has gone out, and the room is stifling. But nothing can silence the song of Lucie G., 50, a native of the West Indies who says that "having a relationship with the Father is the most extraordinary thing. I wish it for the whole world."
Representatives of much of that world are right there in the room with her: almost all the congregation — 1,500-strong on most Sundays — hails from outside France. Pastor Selvaraj Rajiah, who founded the church 15 years ago with his wife Dorothée, is Indian. Other worshippers come from Congo, Ivory Coast, Martinique, even the U.S. Immigrants "find support in the church," says Rajiah. "We pray with them. We give them comfort. We give them counsel."
Across the Continent, immigrant congregations are thriving. Europe's newest residents are among its most faithful, a trend not exclusive to Christianity. Many Muslim immigrants arrive with little more than a suitcase and their religious devotion, which often clashes with the mores and even the laws of their new homes. And when Christians from the Caribbean and Africa move to Europe, they "bring with them habits of the heart," says Joel Edwards, the Jamaica-born general director of Britain's Evangelical Alliance. He notes that African churches are some of the U.K.'s biggest and fastest-growing, and that so many immigrants have joined that more than half of London's practicing Christians are now nonwhite. "If you go to a foreign country, you are cut off from your own country. Church can be a great source of solace," says Bernadette C. Hayes, a sociologist at Queen's University Belfast. "It can be a good employment center and a place where you find solidarity among like people." Bernard-Robert Wagon, 44, agrees. After moving from Congo to France in 1990, it took a while to discover Parole de Foi. "I couldn't find what I was looking for. I went to [other] Protestant churches, but found them too cold," he says. "I want something to descend into my heart. I found that here."

GOD HAS GONE USER-FRIENDLY
If you grew up going to church, you can probably still recall the feel of the hard pews and the drone of the sermons. So when Arto Antturi, director of Finland's Thomas Community, describes traditional services as "very bureaucratic," "obsolete" and "irrelevant," you may find it hard to disagree. "People still have those memories," he says, "of the church not being with the people."
Antturi's antidote: get the people involved. The Thomas Mass, a Lutheran-led ecumenical service celebrated by the community each Sunday in Helsinki, gives churchgoers more than hymns to sing and sermons to endure. Up to 100 volunteers participate, reading scripture, playing music, washing communion cups, brewing coffee and tea. The hands-on approach, as well as the acceptance of questioning — the service is named for the apostle Thomas, who the Bible says asked to see the resurrected Christ's wounds — have boosted the Mass's appeal. That the service now draws more than 800 people each week is "a happy accident," says Olli Valtonen, one of its creators. The founders wanted a service that would work for them. But they weren't the only ones who felt that traditional church wasn't meeting the needs of young urbanites; dozens of churches across the Nordic region have copied the model.
Timing was one issue — the Thomas Mass starts at 6:30 p.m., recognizing that people no longer feel obligated to be in a pew on Sunday morning. Other churches in Europe remember the Sabbath but also make other days holy, holding 30-minute lunchtime services or weekday breakfast Bible studies. "If they had a Thursday-night service, I would be more likely to go," says Alex Olzog, 24, a student from Munich who is an occasional churchgoer. "I want to relax on the weekends."
It's no accident that the minority of churches and movements that are growing emphasize accessibility, not only in timing but also in style. Take the Alpha course, a 15-session intro to Christianity launched in 1992 at Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB), an Evangelical Anglican church in London. Alpha's defining feature is curiosity. "Most people at some point in their lives say, 'Is this what it's all about? Can I start again? What happens when I die?'" says HTB vicar Sandy Millar. "They weren't getting the answers." Alpha seeks to provide them — and has spread to 38 countries in Europe and 96 others around the world; it now has 5 million alumni, and churches across the denominational spectrum use it as an outreach tool.
Each Alpha session begins with a casual dinner, followed by a talk, singing, prayers, then discussions in small groups of 10 to 12. Last Wednesday, hundreds of Londoners packed the HTB sanctuary, chatting over lasagna and lemonade, grappling with theological issues but also just catching up with friends. "Nothing in these groups is wrong," says Caroline Mirams, 33, a lapsed Catholic who works at a headhunting firm. "People can explore their thoughts and doubts." Sociologist Davie explains Alpha's popularity by listing its benefits: "direction, fellowship, firmness, community and belonging, in a world of flux." But part of the success of Alpha and the Thomas Mass is also down to packaging, in an age where marketing matters. "Our society has changed," says HTB pastor and Alpha founder Nicky Gumbel. "We don't need to change the message but we need to change the way we put it across."

GOD IS AMONG THE YOUTH
When Roger Schutz-Marsauche settled in the Burgundy village of Taizé in 1940, it was nearly deserted. Most farms had been abandoned years earlier, after a fungus killed the grapevines and working-age people left for the cities. "Stay here!" one old woman told him. "We are so alone."
If only she could see the place now. The monastic community that Brother Roger set up there has mushroomed into a place of ecumenical pilgrimage for an unlikely crowd: youth. Each year, more than 100,000 people — 90% under 30, and most of them European — pour into Taizé to spend a week meeting, talking and attending thrice-daily worship. In the summer, Taizé welcomes up to 6,000 visitors a week, three times as many as it did 15 years ago. Many who come praise the peace of the place, says Brother Emile, who first visited when he was 17 and later joined the community for life. "People find life very complicated. They want to meet other people who are searching. They want to share their hopes and doubts."
The special appeal to youth, says Brother Emile, "is the surprise," because Taizé never targeted them. It's part of the larger rejuvenation of Christianity among European youth. Conventional wisdom holds that people grow in faith as they age, and youth are traditionally seen as the least religious of all. "They are the ones most vulnerable today," says Ivan Dragicevic, a Medjugorje visionary — one of six in the Bosnian town who claim that the Virgin Mary began appearing to them in 1981. He says Mary has called him to pray for young people. "The outside world bedazzles youth, and it's much harder for them than it was before." As Europe has grown less religious, you'd expect that its youth would too, and in several countries — Britain, Spain and the Netherlands — they have. But overall, "an increase in religion among youth is very clear," says French sociologist Yves Lambert. Among Danes, the number of 18-to-29-year-olds who professed belief in God leapt from 30% of youth in 1981 to 49% in 1999. In Italy, the jump was from 75% to 87%. Even in France, which has Europe's highest proportion of atheists, the figure crept from 44% to 47%.
The rise seems remarkably public. "It's an openness we haven't had for years," says Bishop Martin Lind of Linköping, Sweden. Last month, he took a five-day pilgrimage in honor of the 700th anniversary of the birth of St. Birgitta and was shocked that "500 young people walked with me." One million Catholics descended on Paris for World Youth Day 1997 celebrations. In 2000, 2 million flocked to Rome for the event's Jubilee edition. And at least 40% of those at Ecumenical Church Day in Berlin were under 30. "At home, not many young people go to church anymore," said Andrea Barbi, 17, who traveled from Neu-Ulm in Bavaria for the festivities. "But when I look around here, it's not much of a problem."

GOD HAS GONE ALTERNATIVE
" Jesus, remember me when you come into Your kingdom," repeats one Taizé song, over and over and over. "Jesus, remember me when you come into Your kingdom." Few who have been to Taizé can forget its meditative, almost chant-like music. Many take the sound home with them, just one example of the staggeringly eclectic mix of worship styles all across Europe. "Parishes are looking for different ways to reach people — one-day retreats, moments of meditation, healing masses," says the Rev. Christina Berglund, dean of the Diocese of Stockholm, who believes the church must choose between flexibility and irrelevance. "There has to be room for people's own reflection and interpretation. It's individualism in a group context."
In London, the Anglican parish of St. James' Piccadilly hosts a popular program called Alternatives, which offers talks and workshops on a rich assortment of unorthodox spiritual realms in order to emphasize the "radical inclusiveness" of the Gospel. In Scandinavia, some churches have devised "Rainbow Masses" (for gays) and "Sophia Masses" (for feminists). Outside the collective context, the range of influences is even more diverse. Many people may be rediscovering spirituality, but they're not necessarily returning to the church or sticking to its tenets. Call it à la carte Christianity. More and more, says Christian Welzel, a political scientist at the International University Bremen, "people tend to construe their own patchwork religion that takes elements from Buddhism, for instance, or aspects of Hinduism that they find interesting, to create their own belief system."
Such unorthodoxy worries some church leaders, but it satisfies the yearnings of millions of people who prefer to chart their own spiritual course, getting help and guidance along the way from websites or the new age shelves at the local bookstore. They may be the toughest crowd for the traditional church, which seems to acknowledge the need to adapt to modernity, but just isn't willing to bend that far. "The church needs to enter modern culture and to get to know modern culture," says Godfried Cardinal Danneels, Archbishop of Brussels and Mechelen. "But it's a mistake to think that we should try to attract more people by diluting our message."
Last Sunday was Pentecost, which marks the moment nearly 2,000 years ago when, according to the Bible, the Holy Spirit gave the apostles the ability to share the gospel in all different languages. "When they heard this sound," the Book of Acts says, "a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language." Pope Paul VI said Pentecost is not a one-day event, but an ongoing, much-needed phenomenon. The challenge for today's church is to translate the Christian faith into the life languages of modern Europe, a place more pluralistic and liberal than ever. "Through the centuries the church has found ways of expressing the dogmas of the faith that are relevant to changes in the society," says a senior Vatican official. But what does that mean in practice? Should the Catholic Church honor the humanity of its clergy — and bolster their shrinking ranks — by allowing its priests to marry? What stances should denominations take on divorces or homosexuality or the other realities of modern life? "Religion can make the good better and the bad worse," says Cardinal Danneels. "Religious leaders have a tremendous responsibility in guiding their flock." How do you do it when the flock isn't even sure it wants to be guided?
The obstacles are enormous. But at the very least, it's encouraging that the church "is conscious of its own sinfulness and frailties," says Ireland's Bishop Walsh. "We now have a more open and honest church." The faithful can take heart, too, from the knowledge that, while their God may not be in the E.U. constitution, He's still all over Europe.
The faith endures, even in places like Chartres. "We cannot close the door on people," says Father Emile Manuel, who has been serving there since 1948. Even as visitors are wowed by what the cavernous cathedral is — a magnificent example of human handiwork — rather than what it was meant to be — a tribute to God — "we have made a church within a church." Twice each day, they build it all over again. The townspeople — just a few dozen on weekdays, as many as 1,000 on Sundays — push forward toward the choir, an intimate space within the vastness of the cathedral. They push past the backpackers, past the tour groups craning their necks for a better view of the stained-glass windows, past the occasional dog that wanders in with its owner. They take their seats for Mass. And twice each day, the priest prays the prayer that Christians have had on their lips and in their hearts for centuries. "Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory," he intones, "forever and ever. Amen."