The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750-2000 - Brief Article - Book Review

Contemporary Review, Jan, 2004

The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750-2000. Hugh McLeod and Werner Ustorf, editors. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]40.00 (US$60.00). 234 pages. ISBN 0-521-81493-6. The essays in this collection are based on papers read at a conference held in Paris in 1997. How and why Christian belief and practice have declined are the questions tackled here.

There is an introduction by Prof. McLeod followed by twelve essays which are divided into four groups. The first three essays deal with the effect of the 1960s, with Sweden and with 'new Christianity', i.e., the re-formation that has occurred in the new secularised world. Part Two has four essays dealing with the growth of religious pluralism in England since 1700, Catholicism in Ireland, the churches in The Netherlands from 1750, and the Darmstadter Wort issued by the Evangelical Church in Germany in 1947 in which the church admitted her 'mistakes'. The third part, with three papers, looks at the relationship of Christianity with burial rituals in modern France, the impact of technology on Catholicism in France between 1850 and 1950 and the semantic structures of religious change in modern Germany. The final part has two papers. The first takes a longer view of the changes whilst the second, by the co-editor, Werner Ustorf, is a 'missiological postscript' in which the missionary perspective is called on as a way to study Western Europe. (The Introduction states that Constantine 'declared Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire' whereas he actually only granted toleration and abolished state cults; Christianity was not 'established' until 391.) (A.J.B.)