Why Western Churches Become Empty?

Out friends recently told us that they would hold open seats for us at church for the service. Once this happened in Verona before baptism, and on another occasion in Munich during a solemn service for the Irish in honor of their national patron saint, St. Patrick. This surprised us. Because people often speak – some with concern, others not without satisfaction – about Spopolamento delle Chiese, depopulation of churches, about the end of national churches: Catholic, Protestant, Reformed, or even Orthodox in the countries of once Christian Europe, more so in Western than in Eastern Europe.

We made the right decision by taking advantage of this offer. Because all the seats were taken. Just like in the old days on ordinary Sundays in Italy or Germany. Still, the crowd in the church testified to the fact that in most European countries there are even more worshippers at a weekend worship service than there are fans at a professional football match, not to mention political or cultural events.

But the statistics leave no doubt about church life throughout Europe. In general, church attendance is gradually declining. People who still remember the old days, who ask questions of their fathers and mothers, grandparents or even older people, or look through yellowed photo albums, are amazed at the decline of church life. Even when it comes to some solemn occasion, at baptism or in the case of a funeral, at first communion, confession, confirmation and marriage, people do not consider it obligatory for the church to be involved. That said, the speed of these changes seems even more surprising than the current state of affairs. Especially when compared to the venerable, two millennia old age of Christianity in Europe. Within half a century the churches had emptied out, especially in the “western Roman” part.

Why? How could this happen?

Historians and journalists give us a thousand reasons for this. For example, they speak of the inevitable rise and fall of any culture, the weakening or destruction of religion, dissenting or angry reformers, scandals in particular and unworthy servants of God on Eearth in general.  Anything can happen. Both the highly intelligent experts who have studied the issue for years and the people who talk about media trends on a daily basis all have an audience.

But to find the true causes, we probably need to be more patient and identify human and individual trends. Because this begs the question: why is religion, Christianity, and the church still needed in modern life? Why in a self-created culture is belief in an unearthly God, in a transcendent beyond, necessary? After all, modern people are offered so many tools and aids to cope with the vicissitudes of life, reduce their fears, and start rejoicing more. With or without desire. And with the ubiquitous development of electronic communication tools, such mechanisms are becoming more and more intrusive.

So let’s break it down briefly: since the end of the Middle Ages, since the great turning point around 1500, the pursuit of heavenly things has become increasingly restrained. This was happening when Christopher Columbus of Genoa was discovering the New World with its unlimited possibilities, sailing under pious sails but armed with a deep knowledge of navigation. This was happening when Martin Luther at Wittenberg subjected official Christianity to his personal will. This happened when natural scientists, such as Galileo Galilei, went against the religious system, and philosophers, and finally the theologians themselves, increasingly limited the space of God’s existence on earth.

No announcement has yet been made about his presumed death. The German great prophet Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was then deeply frightened when he cried out as he looked at the spires in every European city: “What else are these churches if not the graves and tombstones of God?” <”Che altro sono ancora queste chiese, se non le fosse e i sepolcri di Dio?”> (The Joyful Science, 3,125). The superhuman from the center of Europe became “obsessed” with it and dissolved into a spiritual void.

Most Europeans were and still are less sensitive, even though they still guard church towers and bells in almost every village. Primarily because their other helpers in life have very slowly but inexorably replaced religion, Christianity, and churches over the centuries. Before the new age, celestial forces were still responsible for wealth and ruin on Earth, but now more and more Europeans – surprisingly for themselves – were taking their destiny into their own hands and building their daily lives themselves. First on God’s behalf and then on their own.

National churches have long coexisted with the secular advances of the post-1500 centuries in science and technology, in the productive economy, and with respect to the judicious use of capital and the enrichment of the population. After all, they had to be concerned primarily with the salvation of the souls of believers in the afterlife and hardly interfered in matters of the “workaday life” of peasants and townspeople beyond the bounds of interpersonal propriety. Their territory was Sundays and holidays, as well as the higher matters of life. This seemed to satisfy the rulers; it seemed to them that pious citizens were likely to be the best subjects in a tranquil state.

That’s changed. The demands of the new times required better training and competence. Thus the number of schools and universities grew, and with them the number of professors and teachers and educated people in general. They found their calling in new, more challenging professions in business and commerce or as civil servants in administration. Many of the neo-intellectuals thought differently. They did not want to destroy Christianity per se, but above all they wanted to take the place of the clergy by opposing “authority” and abuse by the churches.

The writings of the Italian humanists, the ideas of the British Freemasons, the topics in the salons and debating clubs of Paris, and soon of many European provinces, are not so unchristian, except that they lack church and clergy. The spiritual wind was vividly manifested by the Parisian mocker Voltaire (1694 – 1778) or the Prussian King Frederick II (*1712, 1740 – 1786) and, of course, at the French Revolution (1789). Their battle cries of freedom, equality, and brotherhood are borrowed from the Bible. Now as well, on the tricentennial of the birth of Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 – 1804), we can pay homage to the great Enlightenment philosopher. But enthusiasm for reason, “pure” and “practical” as a universal measure, has waned since the catastrophes of the last two centuries. “The faculty of judgment” that Kant refers to seems rather vague when it comes to the major questions of the heavenly and the earthly. This has since prompted the “intelligentsia” as a socio-political ruling caste to fight for new ways to paradise at the expense of traditional religion. Italian communist Antonio Gramsci (1891 – 1937) spoke of “cultural hegemony” because he was probably quite embarrassed by outright atheism and bloody revolution.

But this intellectual upheaval, with all its historically powerful main and side effects, shows how the zeitgeist has now taken hold in Europe. When perhaps the good intentions of some revolutionaries spawned one ideology after another and led to disasters. When the power of the state continued to grow, far beyond all the real or imagined sins of the churches, penetrating the private lives of people in the 21st century AD on an unprecedented scale.

But this brief essay is not about history, but about why churches in Europe are in decline. It seems amazing to me that they have not yet completely emptied out in the face of powerful countervailing forces: a state that is penetrating people’s minds and hearts more strongly than dictatorship ever did; a modern intelligentsia alien to religion, for whom cultural hegemony is essential to maintaining its power; and a public anticlericalism and atheism that are becoming commonplace.

Christian churches will continue to exist, whether as a “small flock” or a cultural empire, because of the truth of their core message.  From man and from God.

The end