God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis, by Philip Jenkins
OUP, £16.99
This is the third volume in Philip Jenkins’s acclaimed trilogy on the future of Christianity. The two previous works projected an optimistic vision of resurgent global Christianity, with its motor in the developing world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. Jenkins’s new book is about Christianity’s encounter with the challenges of Islam and secularism in its European heartland.
Is Christianity dying in Europe? It seems so, with emptying pews, greying congregations and a plunge in the numbers studying for the priesthood. Meanwhile, Islam seems to be surging ahead, leading to a spate of apocalyptic books about “Eurabia” with titles like While Europe Slept. But Jenkins counsels optimism. As an American academic historian with a clear Catholic-Christian commitment, he forms part of a small but important voice within the halls of American higher education (which in turn informs a much larger centrist-conservative formation on the US intellectual landscape).
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