It is happening now in the Netherlands, churches are being “liquidated”:

The church pews will be sold according to size. The shortest ones, at 3.6 meters (12 feet) long, can be purchased for €40 ($52), the longer six-meter pews for €60. Churchgoers in the Dutch town of Bilthoven have already carried 17 pews out of their sanctuary.

The pews will not be a problem, says Marc de Beyer. But the organ and the baptismal font weighing hundreds of kilos at the back of the church will be more difficult.

Over a year ago, I wrote a column in the Panama City News Herald about the general decline and social changes that I had witnessed in London since my first trip there many, many years ago. It drew several rebuttals about how I was just ignorant, didn’t understand, was anti-Muslim or just really, really stupid. As is my competitive and combative nature,I responded in kind on my old blog here.

England was once the greatest power on the face of the Earth, recognized by common phrases such as, “the sun never sets on the British Empire” and “Britannia rules the waves”. Global domination by an island country smaller in land area than Louisiana (England is only 50,337 square miles, Louisiana is 51,840) is something almost inconceivable today. Even today’s United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland only make up all around 94,500 square miles, still smaller than the state of Michigan.

England’s greatness was built upon a confident spirit and the ability to magnify their relatively meager resources to control the flow of commerce and to exploit the resources of their colonies. As such, they really weren’t a net exporter of much. They were the greatest exporter of one thing, though – Christianity.

One of my points in the October article was that in my time in the West End of London, British accents were heard in the minority. There were side streets that looked more like streets in a prosperous Arab city than a prosperous western city. I heard far more Arabic and Farsi spoken than the King’s English, indicating to me a shift in culture and a decline in historical English influence. As could be predicted, I was attacked as a bigot for even mentioning it.

The American “progressive” loves to play a “zero sums” game. One can see that in any discussion related to the economy because they believe that the only way that people get rich is by taking it from someone else. That implies that there is a finite amount of value and more can never be created, so to get it means that it has to be taken by someone, from someone.  I say that they like to play that game – and they do – but only when it advantages them. They refuse to see that with culture and society, it is a zero sums game. When a culture takes over another culture, it isn’t a perfect blending, not a 50/50 mix. The stronger culture only adopts the parts of the defeated culture that support the growth of the dominant one. The UK is seeing this now, more specifically in England, far less so in Scotland and Wales.

The cultural declines that are being seen in the larger cities of England are being resisted elsewhere in the UK. Scotland is still fiercely independent and protective of their storied culture, as is Wales and Ireland. These are not racist countries but they are very confident cultures with a belief that there is no need to allow their beliefs and societies to be eroded by “diversity”. Far from segregationist, these cultures understand other cultures via the history of the British Empire – they have just made a collective decision that their way of life, their people and their belief systems are superior to others, work for them and if you want to come and live there – just know that joining us mean adopting our way of life, not changing it.

So much of that fierce independence is based on religious belief.

What England is facing is a creeping disease of agnosticism and a liberalized clergy seemingly bent on the destruction of the very Church that they claim to love and serve. The agnosticism is spreading like the medieval Black Plague across continental Europe and washing up on the white cliffs of Dover. This disease is evident in the shrinking of religious affiliation and the closure of churches.  This is noted in an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel today.

A drastic exodus from the church is underway in the Netherlands. With two churches shuttered each week, one man has become the country’s top advisor on how to repurpose the once holy buildings. Some are demolished, while others find new life as mosques, stores and even recreation centers.

Marc de Beyer is an art historian in Utrecht, located about a half an hour by train from Amsterdam, but one could also call him a liquidator. He’s a man who shuts down churches. When a parish is dissolved, when a church is shuttered, de Beyer is there. And he has a lot to do.

Some 4,400 church buildings remain in the Netherlands. But each week, around two close their doors forever. This mainly affects the Catholics, who will be forced to offload half of their churches in the coming years.

“And that’s just the beginning,” says de Beyer.

While the article speaks mainly about churches in the Netherlands, it notes that this is an ongoing European trend:

For years the number of faithful has been declining. The trend has swept across all of Western Europe, with churches forced to close in France and Belgium too. But in the Netherlands, Christianity’s retreat from society has been particularly drastic. The Protestant Church alone loses some 60,000 members each year. At this rate, it will cease to exist there by 2050, church officials say.

It is a fact that Europe is becoming more and more secular. Angus Reid is a major Canadian polling firm and a global poll conducted by them in 2006 showed this:

The Angus Reid World Poll conducted for Maclean’s found that most Europeans and Canadians appear to be turning away from religion, while Indians, South Africans, Mexicans and residents of three Middle East countries still consider it an important part of their daily lives.

France is at the bottom of the list, with only 17 per cent of respondents expressing interest in religion, with Britain at 23 per cent, Germany at 24 per cent and Spain at 31 per cent. Italy, traditionally one of the most Catholic countries in Europe, is the exception among continental nations with 51 per cent.

The trend towards secularism has been evident in France during the presidency of Jacques Chirac. In February 2004, the French government implemented a ban on religious symbols in schools as a measure to reaffirm the country’s secular identity. Former government minister Bernard Stasi headed the panel, which concluded that some garments—such as Islamic scarves, Jewish kippas and crosses—represent a “conspicuous” sign of spiritual affiliation that should not be allowed in the classroom.

A common theory that exists is that the simple march to modernity – greater education, etc. – produces a decline in religious behaviour.

I find validity in the thoughts of Dr. Peter Berger, Professor of Sociology and Theology and Director, Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs, Boston University, speaking at a luncheon roundtable entitled “Secular Europe and Religious America: Implications for Transatlantic Relations” on April 21, 2005 at the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. Dr, Berger stated:

The other idea one has to put aside is the idea that modernity necessarily leads to a decline in religion. This notion of modernity, for obvious reasons, is an idea very much favored in Europe – modernity leads to secularization, in other words, presumably necessarily. This idea was very widely held by historians and social scientists in my youth, which now seems about 200 years ago. I had the same idea and then had to change my mind, not because of some philosophical or theological change, but because the evidence to the contrary was overwhelming. Modernity does not necessarily lead to a decline in religion. What it does lead to – and the evidence is around us on this – what is does lead to, I think necessarily, is pluralism, by which I simply mean the coexistence within the same society of very different religious groups (you can also apply it to racial or ethnic groups). And this fact has enormous implications, which I can only allude to very briefly.

Walter Russell Mead, speaking at the same event adds another layer of possibility:

Red state America would draw comparisons between stories in the Hebrew Scriptures and Europe’s reduced religiosity during the idolatrous worship of the nation-state in the late 19th early century leading up to the catastrophe of World War I. The people turned away from worshipping God so He punished them. Did they listen? No. They went from worshipping Him to worshipping the nation state. And when that was seen to fail in World War I, they did not return to God. No, they turned to communism and fascism – even darker forms of idolatry. And then He really whacked them. But did they listen? No.

The conclusion that I have drawn is threefold. The declines in religion in Europe, primarily Christianity, are being brought about by:

• The increasing influences over time of the migrating populations from the former communist bloc counties.
• The increasing impact of social liberalism/libertine beliefs (a libertine is a person who is unrestrained by convention or morality).
• The fact that agnosticism is truly a temporary condition.

With respect to the increased influences of the migrating populations of the former communist counties, this demographic infiltration of members of former socialist/Marxist/communist societies cannot be discounted as a driving factor. One of the major features of these authoritarian governments was the forced secularization of their societies and the replacement of God by government – and by extension, by man. As they spread into Western Europe, those secularist beliefs are also spreading.

Increasing social liberalism – bordering on libertine behavior – is causing disrespect for rules and the institutions that are built on them. Social liberalism preaches the same sort of “man is God” irreligious perspective as communism but rejects that there is any governance other than what man’s desires are at any given point in time. We touched on that subject here in The Ungovernable Man.

Societal agnosticism is in fact, a temporary condition. There is an old saying that if you believe in nothing, you will believe anything. Such is true for “agnostics”. How many times do we see the non-religious flock to churches and pray to God in times of great distress? This lack of commitment to a belief system does however make Europe fertile ground for the supplanting of Christianity by Islam, something also noted by Walter Russell Mead in his statement from the aforementioned Pew event:

The ideals of communism and fascism are not popular in Europe today; rather the people participate in the worship of a consumer utopia of sorts. I think Pope Benedict XVI might echo some of these sentiments. What you see now in much of Europe is that it has lost the biological will to live. A red state American might say that Europeans are failing to reproduce themselves and are being visibly supplanted by Muslims who at least believe in God, even if they are of the wrong religion. This is a portrayal of American red state view of the last 100 years of European history. I’m trying to channel the opinions of people who don’t have opinions on this subject, and I realize it’s kind of a risky thing to do.

There is a vote upcoming in 2015 regarding the independence of Scotland, breaking away from the United Kingdom. It is clear that the growing differences in culture and religion will play a significant part in the vote. Being a non-citizen and outsider with only genealogical ties to Scotland (just not enough to run for King, wouldn’t you know!), I have but only an opinion…

Hail to a free and independent Scotland! Hail to the land of William Wallace and King Robert the Bruce!

Far from being one man’s opinion, there are mounds of statistical and social evidence that the very foundations of Western civilization and those of America are eroding and those undeniably parallel the decline of Christian beliefs. If we allow what is washing up on the shores of England to infiltrate America, for the first time in our history, our grandchildren will be faced with a world where America will be reduced to a footnote, an asterisk in the recorded history of free nations. We will all be looking for enclaves of cultural safety and those may well be in the Christian strongholds in small countries like Scotland…better learn to like haggis.

Merry Christmas to all and may God bless America – partly because I don’t like haggis… My sincerest wishes for a rich and rewarding New Year to all…