“Attendance at Britain’s mosques has outstripped the number of regular worshippers in the Church of England for the first time,” London’s Sunday Times reported on January 25, 2004. “Figures compiled from government and academic sources show that 930,000 Muslims attend a place of worship at least once a week, compared with 916,000 Anglicans.”

Given declining birth rates and church attendance, alongside large-scale Muslim immigration, might Europe one day become an Islamic continent?

Not necessarily so, says Philip Jenkins in God’s Continent. His argument is two-pronged. First, he aims to counter the idea that Christianity in Europe is in a state of terminal decline. Second, he aims to show that Islam will itself be changed by its European surroundings.

I found the first part of his argument to be the least persuasive. It’s true that one can find bright spots in European Christianity. London’s Catholic churches are packed — though not, as it turns out, with newly fervent Brits but recent immigrants from Poland. And ’s true that pilgrimages, papal visits, and Christmas services all draw large numbers. But these examples all have the air of exceptions that prove the rule.

The second part of his argument I did find persuasive. Islam in southeast Asia has a different character from Islam in the Middle East; birthrates among Muslims vary enormously from country to country. (Birthrates in Iran are actually below the 2.0 replacement level.) Why should Islam in Europe not in turn have a different character? In France, an aggressively secular country, it turns out that Muslim attendance at mosques is down to just 5 percent. Existing in a milieu that has traditionally believed in freedom of speech has had less predictable effects. On the one hand, freedom of speech allows for militant, politicized Islam to make its case; on the other, it allows a Muslim writer to argue in favor of Salman Rushdie’s right to blaspheme. The outcome remains to be seen.

Jenkins concludes that Europe may in fact be at the low point that precedes a large-scale religious revival. I’m less sanguine, and I think it’s sad to see a European Christian culture that has endured for fifteen hundred years now in such a state of decay. Still, I think Jenkins’ book adds a welcome nuancing to an often simplistic debate.

Philip Jenkins. God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis. Oxford University Press, 2007. Hardcover. 352 pages. ISBN 9780195313956. $28.00.

From my blog at http://true-small-caps.blogspot.com