ABSTRACT
My purpose in this chapter is a simple one. I wish to establish with richer data the final conclusion of my book Religion in Europe at the End of the Second Millennium: “No single, all embracing model can describe the condition of European religion, much less predict its future.” It is worth noting that the Enlightenment—Voltaire and Diderot and that lot—predicted the end of religion a quarter of a millennium ago and Emile Durkheim made the same prediction almost a century ago. Yet religion still hangs on despite the most recent arguments that finally and at long last it is beginning to disappear. On the face of it, my argument should be self evident unless one believes in ineluctable social forces or energies (usually described in words that end in “ization”) virtually physical in nature, which have ordained religious decline. There has never been any proof that such energies exist. Therefore, it is reasonable to suppose that there are vast variations in the levels of religion in Europe, which, despite the golden age fallacy, has never been very high.
