God’s tentative return to Europe has scholars and theologians debating a hot question: Why? Part of the reason, pretty much everyone agrees, is an influx of devout immigrants. Christian and Muslim newcomers have revived questions relating to faith that Europe thought it had banished with the 18th-century Enlightenment. At the same time, anxiety over immigration, globalization and cutbacks to social-welfare systems has eroded people’s contentment in the here-and-now, prodding some to seek firmer ground in the spiritual.
Some scholars and Christian activists, however, are pushing a more controversial explanation: the laws of economics. As centuries-old churches long favored by the state lose their monopoly grip, Europe’s highly regulated market for religion is opening up to leaner, more-aggressive religious “firms.” The result, they say, is a supply-side stimulus to faith.
“Monopoly churches get lazy,” says Eva Hamberg, a professor at Lund University’s Centre for Theology and Religious Studies and co-author of academic articles that, based on Swedish data, suggest a correlation between an increase in religious competition and a rise in church-going. Europeans are deserting established churches, she says, “but this does not mean they are not religious.”
Well, I've seen that used as the explanation as to why the USA has a rather vigourous religious scene in comparison to Europe, and it does seem to have the merit of plausibility. But then the difficulty with that is just that: plausibility. How far is a 'market' created by lots of competitors and how far is it a mere consumer-led potentiality? In other words, can a market be stimulated into being merely by having deregulation or is a deregulated market for, say, Victorian piano-leg covers always going to be a niche market?
So while I'm intrigued by the suggestion, my basket of explanatory eggs will continue to be supplemented by a chicken-run and a kitchen egg-tidy.
In Europe, God Is (Not) Dead:
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