Is Europe committing suicide?

In this new FORA video, classicist Bruce Thornton argues that Europe has abandoned the Western Christian tradition to which it owes its greatness. Find out if you agree with him here.

If you can't see this video, click here

Comments

[Bob Jones]

So he takes problems like tax burden, economic regulation, reproductiveness and somehow says they are all down to religion?

Where in in the Bible does it say anything about low taxes? That is absolute nonsense.

[Dr Stephen Morris]

Thornton seems to have hit the nail on the head. The one thing he doesn't seem to mention is the corrosive effect of established churches in European countries, and their role in turning populations against Christianity. As we look around today, we see that the countries with the most vibrant churches and often the most vibrant economies (the US, South Korea, Singapore, and increasingly China, for example) are ones that have relative freedom of religion and yet no "official" religion. European countries have tended to suffer from the wholly unbiblical conflation of church and state, which makes Europe an exception to the rest of the world.

Thornton is right that this will be terminal for Europe if the trend is not reversed, but disestablishing the C of E would be a good first step towards accomplishing that.

[Candadai Tirumalai]

Twenty centuries later, it is more than time for a radical, albeit still respectful, reinterpretation of the Christian traditon. As it is, one has fundamentalist America on the one side (not that every American is one) and sceptical Europe on the other. I think the later 19th century moved us towards a constructive reengagement with the Christian past but then that ended.

[Wilfred]

Thanks for posting the video of Bruce Thornton, which was very interesting. I think the flaw in Thornton's argument becomes clear during the section where he claims that the Western cultural tradition has three bases: Athens, Rome and Jerusalem (meaning the Judaeo-Christian legacy). He's right about that, but wrong in his conclusion that therefore Europe should revert to a mediaeval Christian metaphysical belief system.

To be consistent with Thornton, we should therefore go back to believing in the Greek gods and goddesses! Each civilization builds on and re-interprets preceding ones. The Enlightenment (which Thornton lightly mocks, amazingly for a professor of Classics) was precisely that re-interpretation of classical and Christian traditions, which resulted in a secular but tolerant set of political and personal ethics which are not only valid today, but essential for our survival. This is what Europe is trying to uphold, and what the US is in danger of losing.

The antidote to jihadist fundamentalism is not another type of religious fundamentalism - it is a secular, rationalist and tolerant society which separates Church (and Mosque) from State. I had thought that the Founding Fathers of the US constitution had believed the same. Thornton makes me fear that - far from Europe losing its values - the US may be in the process of losing its secularist freethinking and tolerant tradition.