The Jury Is Still Out on Europe’s Religious Future

The moral revolution of the 1960s dealt a blow to Christian faith on the continent, but it might not have the final word.

Conservatives, in the United States and elsewhere, are sometimes faulted for blaming “the 1960s” for many of today’s most persistent social ills. Surveying the situation in contemporary Europe, French social theorist Olivier Roy suggests that they are mostly right—at least with respect to recognizing that the 1960s mark a moral and religious watershed in modern history.

The fallout from that decade sets the backdrop for the question posed in Roy’s pointedly titled book Is Europe Christian? Not mincing words, Roy argues that “[e]verything changed in the 1960s,” when a “revolution in morality took place” and a “new anthropology centred on human freedom” was born.

Roy is a professor at the prestigious European University Institute in Fiesole, Italy, and a longtime student of contemporary European religiosity (and secularity). He has emerged as one of the most astute scholars in his field—comparable to the late sociologist Peter Berger in his wide-ranging interests, theological and historical literacy, humor, and gifted writing. Much of his work remains in French, so the Anglophone world owes a debt to London’s Hurst Publishers for sponsoring this translation.

A Complete Anthropological Revolution

A compact book can only accomplish so much, but Is Europe Christian? nicely introduces the contours of Roy’s thought on the contemporary religious scene in Europe—although much of what he writes might apply to other Western countries as well. Careful with terms, Roy makes a crucial distinction between secularization and dechristianization. The former process, understood politically as the rise of tolerance and religious freedom, has been taking place ...