The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750-2000 (review)

This truly interdisciplinary volume challenges the prevailing idea that there has been "a general decline of religious belief and a marginalisation of religious institutions in modern societies"—what this work calls the "secularisation thesis" (13-14). In a masterful introduction, McLeod weaves together most of the articles in this volume to present an alternative view—namely that Western Europe saw little weakening of religion until the 1960s, too recently to apply to the whole sweep of modern history, and that even now this supposed decline is far from universal.

Specialist studies by historians and sociologists have for some time pointed in this direction. McLeod identifies several leading ideas behind the challenge to the secularization thesis. One is that the European experience of religious decline, instead of being normative as Europeans like to think, is exceptional, standing in stark contrast to the strengthening of religion everywhere else in the world. Another line of argument distinguishes sharply between historical Christendom, in which the state reinforced the authority of the church, and purely religious Christianity. This argument suggests that Christianity was contaminated and weakened rather than strengthened by the union of church and state. Secularization theory, according to another line of criticism, "depend[s] on a narrowly institutional definition of religion, and tend[s] to overlook both popular religion ... and the wider diffusion through society of religious identities, symbols and values" (15). In yet another attack, critics point out that rather than weakening the grip of religion on society, modernization in some ways has strengthened religion. Competition, for example, a notorious characteristic of industrialization, also invigorated the proliferation of rival Christian denominations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Yves Lambert, one of the sociologists contributing to this volume, further damages the secularization thesis with evidence of continuing religious vitality since the 1960s. New religious movements have arisen during the past thirty years: Pentecostal, evangelical, and charismatic ministries have expanded; alternative religious beliefs based on astrology, telepathy, and near-death experiences have become widely diffused; and various forms of religious fundamentalism have grown strong almost everywhere. Even in Europe—Portugal, Italy, Denmark, and among the young in the former West Germany—all of the signs of Christian religiosity except for church membership have increased.

David Hempson gives the argument an interesting twist in his case study of Britain. He turns two of the liberal virtues of the established churches in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century into forces that ultimately undermined them. The grant of relatively generous religious toleration and the extensive dissemination of basic Christian knowledge throughout the population helped evangelical dissenters to mount a formidable challenge to the establishment. Only later, in the second half of the twentieth century, with the erosion of that broad base of religious literacy, did secularization supervene.

Sheridan Gilley's chapter on Ireland presents a markedly but not entirely different picture. Ireland had until recently the greatest percentage of practicing Catholics in the world; more than 90 percent of the population attended mass every Sunday. Ireland is the foremost exception in Europe to the secularization thesis. An alliance between Catholicism and nationalism made Irish society more religious in practice and personal piety after 1850. But the strengthening of religion in Ireland at that point was not unlike that in Victorian Britain, where organized religion also flourished. The difference in religious intensity between the two sides of the Irish Sea widened only in the second half of the twentieth century.

In Peter van Rooden's analysis, the situation in the Netherlands falls somewhere between that of Britain and that of Ireland. After 1870, the Dutch organized in three columns or pillars—orthodox Protestant, Catholic, and Socialist; this pattern strengthened with the introduction of universal suffrage. "[D]uring the better part of the twentieth century in the Netherlands, religion was a more important aspect of social identity than class or region" (118). Van Rooden, however, does not account for the dramatic collapse of religious...