eChurch Blog

My goodness Rick Warren’s church is financially struggling. How can this happen to the ultimate “Purpose Driven” (Trademarked) church?

Rick Warren was cited by Time Magazine (2009) as one of the World’s most influential people and his ‘Purpose Driven Life’ books are the second best selling books of all time, surpassed only by the Bible. Rick Warren has the ear of Obama and gave the invocation at the crowning inauguration of Barack.

Here is some of the report:-

The Orange County Register

LAKE FOREST – Members of Saddleback Church say they expect the congregation to respond with a big “Amen” and cash to Pastor Rick Warren’s appeal for $900,000 by New Year’s Eve.

“This is a great opportunity for God to express himself,” said Jim Walls, from Trabuco Canyon, who received the news after coming home from a ski trip. “It’s a great opportunity for the church to honor God. It’s a great opportunity to raise the points of faith that our shepherd Rick Warren lives.”

Walls, 50, said he is not surprised by the request noting that in his Bible group two members have lost homes in the last two years.

“People have lost their homes, their jobs – are they bitter, No,” he said. “Are they still full of joy – yes. Do they know God loves them – yes. They have sacrificed their pride and given it to Jesus Christ. He knows the pride is the greatest evil. That’s how Satan tries to get us to be our own god.”

The 22,000-member plus congregation was informed of the church’s financial status in an “urgent letter” written by Warren and posted today.

“I have thrilling news to share with you below but first some seriously bad news: With 10% of our church family out of work due to the recession, our expenses in caring for our community in 2009 rose dramatically while our income stagnated. Still, with wise management, we’ve stayed close to our budget all year. Then… this last weekend the bottom dropped out.

“On the last weekend of 2009, our total offerings were less than half of what we normally receive – leaving us $900,000 in the red for the year, unless you help make up the difference today and tomorrow.”

Kim Offhaus said she and her husband will help and isn’t surprised by Warren’s request.

“I know that many people are affected by job loss and that Saddleback church is not immune,” she said. I’m confident we’ll support the church. It’s there to meet the needs of the people spiritually, physically and emotionally.”

Offhaus added that she believes the congregation will come together and raise the money just as they have during other crisis’s like a Tsunami fund a few years ago.

“When Pastor Rick asked for help then, we did it in one offering,” she said. “People at Saddleback are very generous.”

Fourteen year church member Eric Bezko, from Newport Beach called Warren’s request timely and legitimate saying most churches count on big donations at the end of the year.

“It’s nice he’s handled it like this,” said the 51-year-old. “It’s like people can give a Christmas present to the church.”

In Warren’s letter, he provides an opportunity for people to help.

YOU CAN HELP SAVE THE DAY 3 WAYS BEFORE JAN 1.

1. Give as large an end-of-the-year gift as you can to help avert this crisis. If we all do what God leads us to do, we’ll all be a part of a miracle.

2. Mail in your gift today. Gifts must be postmarked in 2009 to be posted as 2009 gifts for tax purposes. Mail to: 1 Saddleback Parkway, Lake Forest, CA 92630.

3. Drop your gift in the box at the front door of the Ministry Center at 1 Saddleback Parkway so you know for certain we get it TODAY or Thursday…

I’m not being funny, but couldn’t Rick himself use this as an opportunity to demonstrate and show us his faith and cough up the needed $900K. Let’s face it, Rick is not really suffering the impact of the recession as much as his ‘sheep’ and $900k is pretty small beer for him.

The real worry of course, is the question of whether all of those millions of churches around the world following the ‘Purpose Driven Church’ formulae, will also find themslevs in financial difficulty?

UPDATE

The finest and funniest post on this today, comes via the Unthinking Anglicans blog, by Revd Ivan Ackeroff:-

A Humble Appeal

Although time-zones differ around the world, Unthinking Anglicans is asking for donations of $1 million by midnight (GMT) tonight. What with the recession, and Christmas-giving being depleted, it is necessary to have loads of money to continue this website. Evangelical pastor Rick Warren, who generated controversy for giving the invocation at President Barack Obama’s inauguration, is asking followers to donate nearly $1 million by the year’s end. So are we. As bible-believers, we are committed to spreading the Good News of a babe born into poverty at Bethlehem. For this we need to be rich. Please send money immediately. We can then preach the same Gospel as Mr Warren. That Jesus entered Jerusalem on a dinosaur.

Absolutely and completely spot on.

Disgusting behaviour:-

Jerusalem Post

Incidents of haredim harassing Christian religious leaders and nuns in the capital are still being reported, according to the Polish honorary consul in the capital, Zeev Baran.

“Yeshiva students hurl insults at nuns and spit at them,” Baran told Israel Radio in a report aired Thursday.

He also said four monasteries were recently sprayed with graffiti and that dead cats and garbage were thrown onto the premises.

Baran further claimed that there had been an attempt to torch a monastery.

The Polish honorary consul met this week with Christian and haredi representatives in the Jerusalem Municipality to try and put a stop to the phenomena without involving the police, and it was agreed that the haredi representatives would act to curb the attacks.

An adviser on haredi affairs to the Jerusalem mayor condemned the harassment, saying, “These acts are similar to anti-Semitic attacks abroad.”

Check out the Rosh Pina Project for ongoing reports and analysis on Christian harassment and persecution in Israel.

You will have to forgive my church calendar ignorance, but apparently this is the time of year when the Christian Church remembers the ‘The Massacre of the Innocents’, when King Herod ordered the murder of all of the young male children in the village of Bethlehem, in a vain attempt to murder the ‘Child King’, Jesus Christ.

This from Wikki:-

The Massacre of the Innocents is an episode of mass infanticide by the King of Judea, Herod the Great, that appears in the Gospel of Matthew 2:16-18. The author, traditionally believed to be Matthew the Evangelist, reports that Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi. Like much of Matthew’s gospel, the incident is introduced as the fulfillment of passages in the Old Testament read as prophecies: “Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, A voice was heard in Ramah, Weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children.”^[1]

The infants, known in the Church as the Holy Innocents, have been claimed as the first Christian martyrs. Traditional accounts number them at more than ten thousand, though more conservative estimates put their number in the low dozens.

I know this will sound morbid, but I can’t help wondering what folks 2000 years ago, would think of our systematic, global ‘massacre of the Innocents’, in the form of abortions.

It is estimated that there were 961,000,000 abortions globally between 1920 – 2008. How does Herod’s crime compare with this slaughter of innocent human beings? The estimated current global monthly average is a staggering 1,206,000 abortions. Did you know that the USA alone is missing some 50,000,000 citizens through abortion? Is our generation as guilty as Herod?

Cross-post from the CyberBrethren Blog

Muslims and non-Muslims who live in nations where Islam is not the law of the land talk a lot about how Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Christians who live in Islamic nations tell a different story. I picked this up from Ron Dreher’s blog, who writes: “If you want to know what it’s really like to live under persecution for your Christian faith and culture, listen to this presentation by Bishop Thomas, a Copt who serves in Assiut, an area of intense Islamic persecution of Christians. I met him once, and the man is so luminous, and peaceful. It’s almost humiliating to be an American Christian, with such an easy life despite it all, and to hear what life is like for Christians in Egypt and elsewhere. If you don’t have time to watch the whole nine minute video, start at about 2:45:

Oh dear, Father Tim Jones has been spaghetti’d for telling tell his flock that stealing from large shop chains is sometimes the best option for vulnerable people. I hope the 30 cans of spaghetti and ravioli had been duly paid for.

UKPA

A controversial priest who advised needy people to shoplift in certain circumstances has been drenched with a bucket of spaghetti and ravioli in a protest.

Father Tim Jones, parish priest of St Lawrence and St Hilda in York, said in a sermon that stealing from large national chains was sometimes the best option many vulnerable people had.

He was criticised by the police and branded “misguided and foolish” by former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey.

He was approached by a man who threw a bucket of spaghetti and ravioli at him as he left the church last Sunday after completing his regular sermon.

A Church of England spokeswoman said: “I can confirm that did happen. “I understand the chap was agitated but Tim had a good chat with him and they parted amicably. It was a misunderstanding about what Tim had said.”

The protest was reportedly carried out by Martin Stot, 48, of Lawrence Street, York, who said he filled the bucket with 30 cans of spaghetti and ravioli.

He told The Press newspaper in York: “I was just offended by what he said. I just got this thing in my head where I thought I would make my own little protest.”

Mr Stot said he hid the bucket in a phone box while he waited for Fr Jones to emerge from the church, the paper reported.

In the controversial sermon, Father Jones said: “My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift.

“I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither. I would ask that they do not steal from small, family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.”

By the way, Mr Stot, if you want to register your protest, you could always have a moan on this blog instead.

Jerusalem Post

The Foreign Ministry and the Interior Ministry differed in opinions this week regarding the status of and benefits given to Evangelicals in Israel, Army Radio reported Wednesday.

The Foreign Ministry “wanted to recognize the Evangelicals as a sovereign group or an independent church, like other churches recognized by Israel,” Bahid Mantzur, head of the Religious Affairs Division of the Foreign Ministry, was quoted in the report as saying.

“The goal was to help them receive benefits like other churches that we recognize, among them tens of clergy churches, tax and customs breaks on cars – and that also has an effect on religious people who come here from outside the country,” Matzur explained.

An Interior Ministry representative was quoted by Army Radio as saying, “If the Evangelicals are added to the list, dozens of additional streams of Christians will demand to receive similar recognition and be eligible for benefits, and the state is not able to withstand such a surge.”

According to the report, In Israel there are 13 recognized religious groups, a list that was established with the founding of the state.

In 60 years no groups have been added. Deputy Foreign Minster Danny Ayalon held a discussion on the subject this week and stressed that Israel needs to assist its friends in the world.

According to Ayalon, the Evangelicals, who donate funds and support Israeli public relations within the United States, deserve help.

During the course of the discussion, it was decided that a mechanism composed of representatives from the two ministries will be established in order to find solutions.

Evangelicals are among Christian groups working closely with the Knesset to promote the status of women around the world, host foreign scholars training in pro-Israel activism and building cooperation with politicians and leaders throughout the world.

Much of the cooperation results from initiatives of the Knesset Christians Allies Caucus. The caucus has included a spectrum of Israeli and Christian leaders and has been cooperating with Christian allies of Israel since its incorporation in 2004.

Well worth a gander in my opinion:-

WEB EVANGELISM BULLETIN

Cross-post by Yeze at the Rosh Pina Project

Why do haredi authorities in Israel fear Christian missionaries so much?

To answer this question, we must start in the eleventh century with a Saragossan philosopher and rabbi named Bahya Ibn Paquda, who wrote the famous text Chovot haLevavot (Duties of the Heart), which has become an essential text within Judaism, and is particularly favoured by Satmar hasidim.

He wrote about the evil inclination within oneself (the ‘yetzer hara‘), and the duty to fight it. Yet whilst Paquda’s writings which were originally referring to the evil inclination within, the yetzer hara has also come to symbolise the enemies of the Jewish people throughout the generations.

In the twelfth century, the ReZaH Zecharia of Lunel allegorised Amalek as the yetzer hara, as did Menachem Meiri of Perpignan in the thirteenth century. Eighteenth century Hasidic teacher Dov Baer of Mezhirich taught that Amalek’s attacked on Israel showed how the yetzer hara attacked the soul. Thus the struggle with the enemy within and the struggle with the enemy without could be seen as one and the same.

Stephen Weiss shows on his Canonist blog how rabbinic scholars came to identify Amalek with ‘Esav’, and Esav with Christianity. Extremist anti-missionaries in Israel push the line that Messianic Jews have betrayed their own people ‘Yaakov’ and currently identify with Yaakov’s enemy – ‘Esav.’

Whilst most Orthodox Jews would not make these direct connections, a small minority of extremists in Israel have taken it upon themselves to literally fight the yetzer hara. For these people, if Christianity is Esav, Esav is Amalek, and Amalek is the yetzer hara, then Christianity itself is representative of the yetzer hara. And if Christianity is the yetzer hara, what are Christian missionaries but the temptations of the yetzer hara?

I write this so that we may understand where hostility to the gospel message is coming from – not a dislike of the message per se, but a pronounced mistrust of the messengers.

Bahya Ibn Paquda originally wrote about the yetzer hara referring to the enemy within. Yet consider how motifs in the following passage, found in Gate 5, Chapter 5 of Chovot haLevavot, have been adapted to describe Christian missionary activity. Surely reading ‘Christian missionary’ for ‘yetzer hara’ would explain the paranoia and dread behind the military tactics of Yad L’Achim and their sympathisers:

‘[The yetzer hara] lies in wait for your moments of inattention: you may be asleep to him but he is always awake to you; you may be unaware of him, but he is never unaware of you. He dons you the robe of friendship, and bedecks himself with the guise of love for you. He becomes one of your confidants and counsellors, one of the sincerest of your friends. He subtly deceives you, going along with what you want with outward signs and gestures of agreement, but all the while he is shooting at you his deadly arrows in order to destroy you, after the fashion of the one of whom Scripture speaks: ‘Like a madman shooting deadly darts and arrows, so is the man who deceives his fellow and then says, “I was only joking!”‘ (Prov. 26:18-19).

The most powerful of his weapons with which he fights you in your innermost being is to try to make you doubt the truths you have accepted, to throw into confusion what you regard as certain, to perplex your soul with lying notions and false arguments, by which he would distract you from your true welfare and confound your firm faith and belief. If you keep on your guard against him and have at the ready the weapons of your mind with which to fight him and turn his arrows from you, then, with God’s help, you will be delivered and saved from him. But if you follow his lead and accept his direction, he will not leave you till he has destroyed you both in this world and the next, and uprooted you from both places, as the saint says of one of the inclination’s agents, one of his soldiers: ‘The wanton woman has mortally wounded many, the strongest of men have all been her victims. Her house is the way to the netherworld, the descent to the courts of death’ (Prov. 7:26-7). So then do not let a conflict with anyone else distract you from your conflict [Arabic, jihad] with him, nor war against another prevent you fighting against him. The struggle against a distant foe should not draw you away from the struggle against an enemy who is engaging you at close quarters, and defence against one who cannot approach you without God’s permission must not stand in the way of defending yourself against one who requires no permission to be with you. The story is told of a pious man who met some people returning from a campaign against their enemies, with the spoils they had taken after a fierce battle. He said to them: ‘You are returning victorious, God be praised, from a little conflict. Prepare yourselves now for the greater conflict!’ ‘What is this greater  conflict?’ they asked him. ‘The conflict [Arabic, jihad] against the inclination and his armies,’ he replied.

It is indeed astonishing, O my brother, that every other enemy you have, when you have defeated him once or twice, leaves you alone: it never occur to him to go on fighting you, since he knows your power is greater than his, and he is in despair of ever overcoming you or gaining a victory over you. The inclination, however, is never convinced – whether you defeat him once or a hundred times. You may defeat him or he may defeat you: if he defeats you, he will kill you, but if you defeat him once, he will lie in wait for you as long as you live to overcome you, as our ancient sages said: ‘Do not trust yourself till the day of your death’ (Mishnah, Pirqei Avot 2:4).

He does not regard the most trivial of your affairs as too insignificant a means of overcoming you. It serves him a stepping-stone, enabling him to vanquish you in more important matters. So you should always be on your guard against him. Indeed, you should regard as important your smallest victory, the least increase of your power over him, and use it as a stepping-stone to greater conquests. For he is quick to submit to you, and has not the strength to resist you, if you stand up to him, as Scripture says: ‘To you shall be his desire, and you shall rule over him’ (Gen 4:7). So do not let his authority terrify you, even if his retinue is great, nor his high rank frighten you, even though his aides are many. For his chief aim is to make what is false seem true; it is his primary intention to establish the lie. And yet, how swift is his downfall, how soon he is destroyed, if you but realise his weakness! The sage well described him in the following verse: ‘Once there was a small city, with few inhabitants in it, and a mighty king came against it, and beseiged it, and built great bulwards against it. But a poor, wise man was found in it, who by his wisdom saved the city.’ (Eccl. 9:14-15).

(Taken from pp.98-100 ‘Textual Sources for the Study of Judaism’ edited and translated by Philip S. Alexander, Manchester University Press, UK, 1984)

I enjoyed the following article written by Frank Schaeffer over at the Huffington Post. I’m certainly not saying that I necessarily agree with any or all of it, but I do see value in reading other opinions and viewpoints, especially from those who have a different perspective on religion and faith.

Huffington Post

Changing the Conversation on Religion (Before it Kills Us All)

The media-labeled “New Atheists” such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have put forward what they regard as the answer to religion: grow up, human race, and abandon your myths!

Most Americans, and maybe even most people around the world, have another answer to the extremes of religion that infect people like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who (allegedly) tried to blow up an airplane over Detroit: hunt down and kill the extremists.

I think just about everyone has missed the real point: religion won’t go away because — like it or not — people are spiritual beings.

Telling religious people to be moderate is not going to solve anything once they are convinced everyone not like them is the enemy of “truth.” Killing more people just makes martyrs. That being the case, the way to confront religious poison is to change religion, not try to win by eliminating it. And that change means we have to try and get to the next generation before the fundamentalists do.

The only real solution to religious extremism is to change the conversation about religion altogether.

We urgently need to make that conversation center on embracing paradox rather than seeking — then trying to impose by force and or “reason” — our pet certainties on others.

How do we change the conversation about religion, roll back the violence done in the name of God (be that by gay-hating American “Christian” fundamentalists or world-fearing “Islamic” radicals — and while we’re at it end the culture war here at home that divides us on everything from the existence of God to abortion and gay rights?

How do we live together in a world where some people fervently believe that the earth is 6000 years old, that gay men and women choose to be gay and can “change” if they want to, that Jesus will soon return (and thus that war in the Middle East is a good thing because it is a “sign” of the much-hoped-for “End Times”) while other people just as fervently believe that people who hold such views are dumb, evil and dangerous?

Do the New Atheist really believe that “Reason” (whatever that is) will win the day after people are indoctrinated? Good luck with that! Do they see signs of that happening? Or do the evangelicals like Pastor Rick Warren really believe that they will convince the world to sign on for a dose of Jesus-induced American middle class-style “values” by following Warren’s trademark narrow minded “purpose driven” model of fundamentalist Christianity?

Does raising the volume help as we shout at each other, mock one another and ramp up our own self-fulfilling “prophecies” of doom? Or is there an alternative?

Put it this way: what might have helped the misguided and inept young man — Abdulmutallab — who allegedly tried to blow up that plane? Say he’d run into you or me in London when he was living there and studying, how could we have talked him into another frame of mind other than that of absolutism and aggrieved confrontation with the “other”?

Would he have changed his views if Rick Warren had handed him a copy of The Purpose Driven Life? And had he converted to Warren’s brand of Christianity would Abdulmutallab have also signed on — as did many of Warren’s followers in Africa — to Warren’s homophobic campaign that (in Uganda) allegedly contributed to proposed legislation to impose the death penalty on gays? (Something that very belatedly Warren spoke out against when pressed by the media). What would have been the use of converting Abdulmutallab to the American moral equivalent of the Taliban’s brand of “Islam” — a version of Christianity that excludes gays, Jews, atheists, and anyone else regarded as the “lost”?

Would Bill Maher have been able to mock the would-be bomber into a change of heart by making fun of his belief in “imaginary friends?”

Or could Christopher Hitchens have convinced Abdulmutallab to abandon religious belief based on a one-sided list of all of the evils in history ascribed to religion?

What if our radicalized and hate-filled American gun-loving, Obama-hating evangelicals with their gay bashing rhetoric could also have once been reached? If so, how?

Evangelical/fundamentalists, Islamic fundamentalists, and for that matter, atheist fundamentalists who stick with their program are forced to try to reconcile the irreconcilable. That tends to piss them off! That tends to make them look for simple solutions from one line Maher-style punch lines to suicide bombs that will once and for all “answer” people with another point of view and shut them up!

Evangelical/fundamentalists and fundamentalist atheists have bought into an idea that my evangelical missionary mother used to phrase as a dire warning: “If you pick and choose between verses in the Bible, the whole thing will unravel! If it’s not all true, none of it is!”

Because picking and choosing is what thinking is, thinking becomes a threat to people who are certain they are right. Who knows where asking questions might lead?

What Islamic, Christian and/or atheist fundamentalists won’t admit is that all fundamentalists do pick and choose, by necessity, when interpreting their beliefs.

Seen any adulterers stoned to death in a church lately? Somewhat less dramatically, but just as tellingly, if you are an evangelical/ fundamentalist churchgoer, have you recently heard that Bible verse in Genesis about how “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives” preached on? And if you are a Hitchens/Dawkins/Maher follower have you read any good essays by them on the weirdly symbiotic relationship between some bloodthirsty secular regimes (China anyone?) and atheist beliefs?

As I point out in my book Patience With God — Faith for People Who Don’t Like Religion (or Atheism) Christian fundamentalists having elevated the Bible (or at least the nicer bits that they like) to the status of a magic book in which God is trapped and kept somewhat like a tame pet, can’t admit that the Bible has flaws and is just plain crazy in places. And try criticizing Dawkins on his website and see how the word “infidel” can be resurrected in spirit if not literally by “open-minded” atheists!

Is there another way to look at “truth” issues that might not lead to hate? Yes. It’s called apophatic theology and can be applied to both secular and religious ideas.

Evagrius Ponticus (a fourth century monk) summed up this view, saying “Do not define the Deity: for it is only of things which are made or are composite that there can be definitions.” In fact, a whole anti-theology came to be called apophatic theology, or the theology of not knowing, or negative theology. It speaks only about what may not be said about God. And this way of perceiving God is found not just in Christianity but in other religions too.

This theology takes a mystical approach related to individual ex­periences of the Divine beyond ordinary perception. It teaches that the Divine is ineffable, something that can be recognized only when it is felt, then remembered. And therefore all descriptions of this sense will be false, because by definition the experience of God eludes description.

Apophatic descriptions of God acknowledge (1) that neither the existence of God nor nonexistence, as we understand these words in the material world, applies to God, (2) that God is divinely simple and that one should never claim God is “one” or “three” or any “type” of being, (3) that we can’t say that God is “wise,” because that implies knowledge of what wisdom is on a divine scale, and (4) that to say that God is “good” also limits God to what that word means in the context of human behavior.

If we want to change the religion debate the same could and should be applied to all philosophy and even to science. There is a difference between opinion and changing/evolving information and absolute and changeless fact. If we’d divide the practical everyday “facts” from making huge and out-sized cosmological “conclusions” we’d all be better off.

We’d also be closer to the truth that we can’t know anything conclusively because we are evolving and not “there” yet (wherever there is!) and also we are part of the paradox we’re seeking to unravel. In other words rather than strapping bombs on ourselves to eliminate the other, we might instead “strap” on a bit of humility be that atheist humility in the face of tenacious spirituality or religious humility in the face of the very apparent contradiction of some of religion’s fondest beliefs by science.

Recognizing that paradox is the way things are is about more than theological conflicts.

Science (grudgingly) embraces paradox too. Take, for example, what seems to be the contradiction between Ein­stein’s proven Theory of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The first theory holds that if you know the initial conditions of a physical system with absolute certainty, then you can know the future outcome of the system you are modeling. Theoretically, then, everything in the universe is as predictable as the speed of light — if you have enough information.

The second theory (Quantum Mechanics) says that you can never know the initial conditions exactly and also that you can’t know what will happen in the future of any physical system. You can only know, to a greater or lesser extent, the probability of something happening because, for instance, some particles can be in two places at once. Quantum Mechanics might be described as the apophatic science of uncertainty.

The point is to agree on a better vision of where we want to evolve to, not just physically but also ethically.

That is a project that believers and agnostics and atheists can and should agree on. We don’t have to “fit” our ideas about how we perceive things together in order to work together. We can be the same “particle” but exist in two places at once.

If the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabs of this world (of whatever religion or no religion at all) could be reached with an “evangelism” of paradox and blessed uncertainty before the people so certain that they are right get to them, we could change our world dramatically for the better.

Uncertainty is not to be “solved” it is to be embraced. That has to be our message as we press into the next decade of this so-far violent and disastrous century.

Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of PATIENCE WITH GOD: Faith for People Who Don’t Like Religion (or Atheism)

It would seem that European ‘elites’ thought that people of faith would simply whither away and vanish. Think again folks, the Church has thrived for two millennia and will be around long after the EU is in the dust.

Reuters

Europe, the most secularized region on Earth, has decided to launch a regular dialogue with the organized religions that many on the continent once thought would wither away.

In a little-noticed article of its Lisbon Treaty, which went into effect on December 1, the European Union agreed to hold an “open, transparent and regular dialogue” with churches, religious associations and secular groups.

What this dialogue will look like is not yet clear, but the fact the European Union has agreed to it reflects the evolving role of religion in a region where it is often overlooked.

“Something has happened in the religious culture of Europe,” said Joseph Maila, a French political scientist whose new job — head of the religious affairs section of the French Foreign Ministry’s Policy Planning Office — is another sign of change.

“Countries that were heading for a stricter separation of church and state, as in France, are now more open to religion while countries where the state was not completely separate from religion are introducing more separation,” he told Reuters.

To illustrate this change, Maila recalled how in 1999 France opposed any mention of Europe’s Christian roots in an EU Charter of Fundamental Rights agreed the next year. The final text spoke of Europe’s “cultural, religious and humanist inheritance.”

The issue returned in negotiations for the EU’s ill-fated constitution, when then Pope John Paul and several traditionally Catholic states tried again to get a reference to Christianity.

“France took a very strong position at the time against countries such as Italy, Poland and Ireland,” said Maila. “They succeeded in blocking this, but now it’s 10 years later and look how things have changed.”

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