Deliver Us from Evil

My work sometimes involves travel abroad, and I seem to find it impossible to visit other countries without gaining insight into our faith and life here at home.

Two weeks ago I was walking by a Paris newsstand near Place de la Bastille when a magazine caught my eye. It was titled Le Monde des Religions (“The World of Religions”). Now, Le Monde is the most prestigious newspaper in Paris—the French equivalent of the New York Times. But I had never seen this magazine, and was more than a bit surprised that Le Monde was devoting an entire magazine to religion. And when I picked it up to investigate I discovered that I was holding the very first issue—this magazine about world religions was a brand new publication, hot off the presses!

Perhaps I should not have been surprised, because right now, for the first time in a long time, religion is a hot topic in Europe. In October alone, for example, one Spanish daily ran front-page features on the legacy of John Paul II and the prospects for a new pope, while a Barcelona-based Catalan-language newspaper published graphs comparing John Paul II’s papacy to other long-reigning popes in history. Paris Match magazine made John Paul II its October 25 cover story, as did the newsweekly L’Express. The first issue of Le Monde des Religions included a lengthy analysis of the state of the Catholic Church.

Of course, only two popes in history have ever reached the 25-year mark before John Paul II did it in late October. So on one level, all this attention is no surprise. But the Catholic Church is not the only newsmaker in the European media. Islamic fundamentalism has been a hot topic in the US since 9/11, but it hit the headlines in Europe a decade before, when terror attacks began there. The Isreali-Palestinian conflict is much closer to home in Europe than it is here, and even the Dalai Lama made October headlines with his week-long Paris seminar on “The Art of Happiness.” And the lead story in Le Monde des Religions is about the election of the new, openly gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire.

All this is quite a change, because for generations now (since the French Revolution dethroned the Catholic hierarchy, along with the monarchy, through much of Europe) it has been fashionable in Western Europe, especially among the elite opinion makers, to think of religion as a sort of cultural dinosaur, on the verge of extinction. Europeans even tried to explain the continued vitality of religion in America by talking of an “American exception” to the rule of religious decline in industrial societies.

But since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran under the Ayatollah Khomeini, the persistence of religions has turned a lot of European heads. Now it is increasingly common to see religion treated as an important factor in public affairs, and many European intellectuals now readily acknowledge that religion may have a future after all. Thirty-five years after the Death of God was announced, He’s enjoying a comeback in the old country.

The lead editorial in Le Monde Des Religions acknowledges this shift with rather aggressive language aimed at the large segment of the educated French public who are indifferent to religion. It begins with a clearly rhetorical question: “Can anyone call themselves cultivated if they know nothing of Kant, of Van Gogh, of Freud, or of Einstein? No, of course not.” Then it draws a sharp parallel with religion: “Is it any more excusable to be completely ignorant of Moses, of Buddha, of Jesus and of Mohammed and of those who follow them? Hardly.”

The editors then go on to assert something that is obvious to most American Catholics but has been a blind spot among many Western Europeans: “Religions are a part of culture,” they say. “They have enriched the heritage of peoples, inspired the arts, politics, law, economics, customs.” Once those simple facts are established, the conclusion seems almost too obvious—yet many educated Europeans are just realizing its truth: “We have to understand the world’s religions if we want to understand the world’s societies, and if we want to understand ourselves.”

Other articles in the magazine demonstrate the editor’s promise to promote religious tolerance (“so necessary in these times”) while avoiding any ulterior motive to convert. One columnist, Jean-Paul Guetny, reflects on the difficulty of giving accurate and insightful coverage to religious affairs, which he called “the most slippery of all subjects.” In analyzing European coverage of George Bush’s religion, for example, he rejects the idea that Bush is a religious “fanatic”: “His faith is less about adhering to a dogmatic outlook and more about an experience of personal rebirth and an energy that lets him assume his responsibilities.” At the same time, he is critical of Bush’s tendency to see himself as an instrument of Providence—especially when trying to justify a War with “immoral” methods like lies and manipulation.

The same columnist is also skeptical of John Paul II’s campaign to include reference to Europe’s Christian heritage in the new European Constitution currently being drafted. His argument: while Christianity (and Catholicism in particular) were crucial influences in forming European Identity, Judaism and Islam also played important roles. “It is important for a Europe with plural points of spiritual reference,” he says, “to stay conscious of the complexity of its heritage.”

This new appreciation of religion’s importance may help Europeans understand Americans better, since so much of our national life is affected by our religious communities (not only the Catholic Church, but especially the 300-plus Protestant dominations, as well as Jews, Moslems, and others). Which makes me wonder whether Americans are ready to appreciate their own blind spots about religion. The irony is, we may have as much to learn from the Europeans about religions as they have to learn from us. In particular, they could teach us a great deal about the Dark side of religion—something we ignore at our own risk.

Next: What we DON”T know about religion could hurt us!

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com