Daily Archives: May 18, 2021

Self-help books are consistently on the best-seller lists across the world. We can't seem to get enough of happiness advice, wellness gurus, and life coaches. But, as the Book of Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun. The Ancient Greeks were into the self-help business millennia before the likes of Dale Carnegie and Mark Manson.

From the 3rd century BCE until the birth of Jesus, Greek philosophy was locked into an ideological war. Four rival schools emerged, each proclaiming loudly that they alone had the secret to a happy and fulfilled life. These schools were: Stoicism, Cynicism, Skepticism, and Epicureanism. Each had their advocates and even had a kind of PR battle to get people to sign up to their side. They were trying to sell happiness.

Many of us are familiar with Stoicism, a topic I covered recently, because it forms the foundation of cognitive behavioral therapy. Skepticism and Cynicism have become watered down or warped variations of their original forms. (I will cover these in future articles.) Today, we focus on the most underappreciated of these schools, the Epicureans. In their philosophy, we can find a surprisingly modern and easy-to-follow "Four Part Remedy" to life.

The Epicureans were some of history's first materialists. They believed that the world was made up only of atoms (and void), and that everything is simply a particular composition of these atoms. There were no gods, spirits, or souls (or, at most, they're irrelevant to the world as we encounter it). They thought that there was no afterlife or immortality to be had, either. Death is just a relocation of atoms. This atheism and materialism was what the Christian Church would later come to despise, and after centuries of being villainized by priests, popes, and church doctrine, the Epicureans fell out of fashion.

In the atomistic, worldly philosophy of the Epicureans, all there is to life is to get as much pleasure as you can and avoid pain. This isn't to become some rampant hedonist, staggering from opium dens to brothels, but concerns the higher pleasures of the mind.

Epicurus, himself, believed that pleasure was defined as the satisfying of a desire, such as when we drink a glass of water when we're really thirsty. But, he also argued that desires themselves were painful since they, by definition, meant longing and anguish. Thirst is a desire, and we don't like being thirsty. True contentment, then, could not come from creating and indulging pointless wants but must instead come from minimizing desire altogether. What would be the point of setting ourselves new targets? These are just new desires that we must make efforts to satisfy. Thus, minimizing pain meant minimizing desires, and the bare minimum desires were those required to live.

Credit: LOUISA GOULIAMAKI via Getty Images

Given that Epicureans were determined to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, they developed a series of rituals and routines designed to help. One of the best known (not least because we've lost so much written by the Epicureans) was the so-called "Four Part Remedy." These were four principles they believed we ought to accept so that we might find solace and be rid of existential and spiritual pain:

1. Don't fear God. Remember, everything is just atoms. You won't go to hell, and you won't go to heaven. The "afterlife" will be nothingness, in just the same way as when you had no awareness whatsoever of the dinosaurs or Cleopatra. There was simply nothing before you existed, and death is a great expanse of the same timeless, painless void.

2. Don't worry about death. This is a natural corollary of Step 1. With no body, there is no pain. In death, we lose all of our desires and, along with them, suffering and discontent. It's striking how similar in tone this sounds to a lot of Eastern, especially Buddhist, philosophy at the time.

3. What is good is easy to get. Pleasure comes in satisfying desires, specifically the basic, biological desires required to keep us alive. Anything more complicated than this, or harder to achieve, just creates pain. There's water to be drunk, food to be eaten, and beds to sleep in. That's all you need.

4. What is terrible is easy to endure. Even if it is difficult to satisfy the basic necessities, remember that pain is short-lived. We're rarely hungry for long, and sicknesses most often will be cured easily enough (and this was written 2300 years before antibiotics). All other pains often can be mitigated by pleasures to be had. If basic biological necessities can't be met, then you die but we already established there is nothing to fear from death.

Epicurus's guide to living is noticeably different from a lot of modern self-help books in just how little day-to-day advice it gives. It doesn't tell us "the five things you need to do before breakfast" or "visit these ten places, and you'll never be sad again." Just like it's rival school of Stoicism, Epicureanism is all about a psychological shift of some kind.

Namely, that psychological shift is about recognizing that life doesn't need to be as complicated as we make it. At the end of the day, we're just animals with basic needs. We have the tools necessary to satisfy our desires, but when we don't, we have huge reservoirs of strength and resilience capable of enduring it all. Failing that, we still have nothing to fear because there is nothing to fear about death. When we're alive, death is nowhere near; when we're dead, we won't care.

Practical, modern, and straightforward, Epicurus offers a valuable insight to life. It's existential comfort for the materialists and atheists. It's happiness in four lines.

Jonny Thomson teaches philosophy in Oxford. He runs a popular Instagram account called Mini Philosophy (@philosophyminis). His first book is Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas.

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Epicurus and the atheist's guide to happiness - Big Think

Reverend Coles joins fellow celebrities Toyah Wilcox and Sharron Davies on tonight's edition of ITV's Tipping Point Lucky Stars. Known as "Britain's most famous vicar", Rev Coles was initially a star as one half of pop duo the Communards during the Eighties, before being ordained in 2005. Since becoming a vicar, Rev Coles has been credited as helping modernise religion and regularly appears on TV and radio with his own shows.

But to many people's surprise, Rev Coles counts among his friends Prof Dawkins, who is highly regarded for his assertive take on atheism.

Atheism itself is described as being a "disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods", and Rev Coles and Prof Dawkins discussed the topic at length on BBC Newsnight in 2009.

Since then the pair have become friends, with Rev Coles admitting he "engaged" with Dawkins and now they follow one another on social media.

He described them as "both typical Aries", and the similarities between them were laid bare by Rev Coles during a piece he wrote for Penguin in 2019.

Alongside Rev Coles piece, Prof Dawkins also penned an article as the pair fiercely debated how people could "outgrow God".

Rev Coles noted how they "share a name, a fondness for dogs, and a birthday, March 26, which I discovered in the Newsnight Green Room when he Googled me before we went on air to argue about religion".

He continued: "I, of course, did not need to Google him.

"We are both public school-educated, and we both underwent the compulsory indoctrination inflicted on us in the chapel.

JUST IN:Rev Richard Coles admits partner David's death was 'full of comedy'

"Both, in our teens, protested by refusing to bow our heads in prayer when instructed to do so by those in authority, both adopted atheism. Typical Aries."

He jokingly then claimed that while Prof Dawkins would be taking part in The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, he was on Strictly Come Dancing, which left him feeling as "much David to his Goliath as Orville the Duck to his Malcolm Muggeridge".

And though Rev Coles admitted he was "not a fan" of Dawkins' bestseller The God Delusion, his rival was a "wonderful guide to the natural world".

He concluded: "His comradely solidarity with those who are waking up to the gap between what religious authority teaches and what actually is the case, presupposes that wakefulness requires a rejection of religious faith. It does not, clearly.

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"I dont think I have ever read any criticism of Christianity in Richards work that I have not thought of independently or encountered elsewhere.

"His description of the processes of change in the natural world I find persuasive and often brilliant but nothing in it causes me to doubt the faith I profess."

While Rev Coles has been a constant force in ensuring faith can still be appreciated and enjoyed within the 21st century, he has been highly critical of some of the practices the church still demands of its worshippers.

Among them is the rule of celibacy for those in the priesthood.

The act of celibacy means a clergy is forbidden from having sex outside a heterosexual marriage - a rule enforced within the church for centuries.

Rev Coles, who was speaking to The Guardian in 2014 regarding the issue, said he was only celibate for "pragmatic reasons", but argued "its not something that I think of as being that significant".

He described it as "the Church of Englands completely ridiculous position, which I think is daft and probably wicked, and all but intolerable.

He continued: I entered the priesthood thinking I was hors de combat I did think that I would be on my own, and not looking to stop being on my own and also not looking in lay-bys and bushes and so on but then I met David.

David was Rev Coles partner, and they entered a celibate relationship until the former passed away tragically in 2019.

Tipping Point Lucky Stars airs from 6.30pm on ITV tonight.

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Richard Coles' confession over friendship with atheist Richard Dawkins: 'Both typical' - Daily Express

Heres something that didnt happen during the last administration: On Friday, White House officials met with the leaders of several atheist groups to hear their concerns. (The last time this happened was 2010.)

Melissa Rogers, Josh Dickson, and Ben ODell from the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships hosted the conversation with members of the Secular Coalition for America.

The requests, as described by the groups, were fairly straightforward. None of them involved special perks for atheists; it was all about maintaining church/state separation and equality under the law.

We stressed the importance of rescinding harmful and discriminatory Trump administration actions, like the Faith-Based Social Services rules and Jeff Sessions Department of Justice memo, and urged that actions going forward better reflect the more historical and pluralistic vision of religious freedom. A suggested action we proposed was the support of judicial nominees with strong stances on religious equality as well as those who are nonreligious.

American Atheists got even more specific:

American Atheists will continue to advocate for more robust protections for Americans seeking services from religious providers to ensure that no one is turned away from a shelter, an adoption or foster agency, or denied access to any other basic service due to religiously motivated discrimination. And if this administration fails to live up to its obligations under the Constitution or its commitments to religious equality and representation for nonreligious Americans, we will hold them accountable.

Theres a legitimate argument to have about whether the government should do any kind of faith outreach, even if its inclusive, but if the office exists, then its important to reach out to the non-religious like the government frequently does with the religious. This may have been symbolic at best its not like those White House representatives have the power to rewrite policy. But the can set expectations and be at the table when high-level decisions are made. The last administration effectively ignored everyone except right-wing Christians. This ones at least not pretending like we dont exist. If nothing else, its a way to remind the administration not to play favorites with religious groups because were paying attention.

Now lets wait and see how many conservative groups flip out over the mere existence of this meeting. A decade ago, there were a number of unnecessarily angry reactions from the right. They acted like the White House had made some kind of secret deal with atheists. Well see what they say this time around, but remember that this was a conversation without promises. It was a chance to open a dialogue with people from the White House, not a way to funnel a godless agenda to the government.

Link:

The White House Faith Office Met with Leaders of Several Atheist Groups - Friendly Atheist - Patheos

*** Paul Strand is retiring from CBN News as a senior Washington correspondent. We repost his salvation testimony,first published on CBN.com, as we bid him a fond farewell.

COMMENTARY

CBN.com -In 1971, I was a 16-year-old smart aleck atheist and I took great pleasure in talking young Christians out of their faith. I would argue, "Why live by faith? By its very nature, you can't know what you believe is true." The only problem with my philosophy is that it was driving me into a deep depression. I would say, "If there is no creator and judge, and all we are is a product of evolution, why do good? Why be good? Why even be?"

That summer, feeling life was so bleak and depressingly purposeless, I was having a hard time figuring out why I should do anything or talk to anyone. My poor mother was panicking for me as I was slipping into a deeper and deeper funk. I was spending more time alone in my room and I was saying hardly anything to anyone.

I recently asked my mother whether it seemed strange that I went so silentduring the infamous summer of 1971.

"It certainly was," said my mom."You were the most talkative child I had seen in on all of my life."

And Mom was not the type to preach to her kids. But finally, one July day she slipped into my room, Bible in hand and I could see clearly she had a bunch of pagesbookmarked.

"I was going to share the scriptures with you," she said.

I never yelled at her before, but I said loudly, "Don't do it. Don't read to me from that book!"

"You became very belligerent," she remembered.

Little demons inside of me were just freaking out.

"Well, I suggested that you could listen to just one scripture," she said.

How did I respond?

"You threw me out of your bedroom," she said.

But my Mom never gave up.

"I just started praying harder than ever," she recalled, looking back on that moment.

At the time I was working at a county agency. It was one of those emergency hotlines that you call when you feel like you are going to commit suicide. And about a week after that wild encounter with my mom, some Jesus People moved into town. They lived in a nearby house. They came over to visit our hotline on a Saturday night. Some hotline workers who knew I hated Christians came running to get me and said, "Paul, there are Jesus Freaks in here."

I ran out and met them on astaircase and yelled, "Get out of here!" But then I looked into their eyes. There was so much love in them and something like the very presence of God. It undid me. I screamed at them and cursed at them and then I actually ran away. Those little demons were hopping around inside me again.

I couldn't stop thinking about those guys and that presence in their eyes. So, the next night, I went over to their place, called The Sonhouse. S-O-N. And I ended up talking to their 21-year-oldleader for about three hours. I could hardly understand a word this guy was saying about having a personal relationship with Jesus. But there was an utter peace about him. He set off this prickly itching inside of me that just wouldn't go away.

Five long days passed, the itchiness never stopped and I just couldn't take it anymore. Finally, out on a long walk, I issued a sort of challengeto the universe. I said, "Alright, we are going to settle this once and for all. If there is a God out there, He has until the end of the night to prove himself. If He does, I will give Him my life tonight. After all, if He is the Lord of the universe, I would be a fool not to. It's His universe. But if He doesn't prove himself tonight, then as a good atheist, I am never going to consider getting religious again."

About 9:30 that night I ended up back at the Sonhouse where the Jesus People lived and I shared my challenge with them. I said, "If you can prove God exists, tonight, then you have me. But if you can't, well then, I guess in your eyes, I'm hellbound."

We spent the next two hours and more battling and debating. They tried every argument. I rejected everyone. They kept bringing up the Bible. I said they couldn't do that because I didn't believe in the Bible. We went round and round and round. Close to midnight they finally gave up.

They said, "Look, Paul, there is no way that physical beings like us can prove the existence of a spiritual being like God." Then they announced they were going upstairs to bed.

Well, I was desperate. I begged them to keep on debating.

I said, "My eternal soul is on the line, right?"

They just kept walking up the stairs to their bedrooms.

I moved to their front door just bathed in self-pity. It was almost midnight as I began to walk out their doorway into the dark night, remembering my challenge to the universe: God had till the end of this day to prove Himself, or I'd never consider believing again. Now, though, as I started to cross that threshold, it felt as ifI was literally walking into Hell.

But at that very moment on that very threshold, I got the shock and surprise of my young life. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a Mighty Presence came upon me. It was powerful and terrifying and yet, at the same time, sweet and very appealing, full of peace and love.And He then spokein a voice that didn't make a sound and yet was so mighty it boomed in my head.

That voice said,"If you want to know I am real, why don't you just ask me?"

I was scared to death and trembling yet I managed to whisper, "Are you real?"

And it boomed, "I AM!" It was so powerful, it actually picked me up, spun me around and knocked me back into the house, down to the floor.

And that Presence out in the doorway swept into the room and began to swirl around it.

It was so pure andholy, that all I could feelwas the weight of my own dark sin. I was crushed flat to the floor with it. And I shouted out, "Lord, forgive me!I am sorry!"

And that swirling Presence came down and touched me gently on the back and said, "You are forgiven. You are free."

I began to weep because suddenly my body felt so light, itwas like I wasfloating off that floor. In gratitude, as I got onto my knees,I began to shout out, "Be my Lord! Be my Lord!"

The Presence said, "Just ask me in."

I said, "Come into my heart." Thenthat Presence sweeping around the room shot down my throat and filled my heart. I fell back down to the floor and began to weep and weep.

A few minutes later, the two Jesus People who had gone upstairs came back down, quietly came over to me and placed their hands on my shoulders. One of them asked, "Paul, would you like to ask the Lord into your heart?"

I replied, "Fellas, what do you think has been going on down here."

Well, that is what happened 50 years ago. About a year later when I was praying alone one day, God's voice returned and He gave me a wonderful prophecy. He said, "I am going to send you to a place called CBN News and you will explore a new form of journalism."

You know, maybe that is what this is.

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How the Booming Voice of God Turned This Veteran CBN News Reporter from Smart Aleck Atheist to Born Again Believer | CBN News - CBN News

Europe was the first continent to be Christianised and it was the first continent to be de-Christianised.

In todays Europe, most public discourse pushes religious matters to the margins or confines it entirely to the private sphere of personal beliefs. And at an individual level, increasing numbers of Europeans say they no longer believe, no longer attend church, and no longer practice their faith in meaningful ways.

This process of secularisation has been a subject of study and debate among sociologists for many years. Some considered it as the inevitable consequence of a rational scientific worldview which, together with the loss of the social significance of religion, would ultimately lead to the disappearance of religion in advanced societies. Others observed that many developed societies around the world seemed able to reconcile modernization and religious faith and that, in demographic terms, the proportion of religious people around the world is on the rise. So why not Europe?

Yet religious belief and practice are complex phenomena. We cannot measure secularisation by merely asking if someone regularly attends church, for example, there are many who continue to believe in God even though they no longer belong to a church, and in other European countries the opposite is true: people continue to belong, and occasionally attend, a state church even though they have no personal religious faith.

To complicate the picture further, similar complexities are evident among the nonreligious. Even in the most secularised countries, the percentage of those who are convinced atheists is relatively small. Self-defined atheism (irreligiosity) and non-belief in God (secularity) are not the same thing, as Kasselstrand and others have demonstrated.

One of the most widely used tools to track sociological trends is the European Values Study, a large-scale longitudinal survey across a wide range of human values including religious belief and practice. There have been five waves of research over a period spanning 1981-2017.

In 2010-2012, making use of the fourth wave of EVS data published in 2008, Vista analysed and ranked the relative secularity of countries, based on six measures of belief and practice

These six questions were chosen to explore the multi-dimensional nature of religious belief and behaviour. For example, someone may believe in God and pray frequently outside of religious services, but rarely attend or have confidence in the church. Or they may attend church but rarely practice their faith or even believe in God. The responses from the six questions were then normalised and combined into a single measure of secularity, what we called the Nova Index of Secularity after the then Nova Research Centre at Redcliffe College.

The publication of a new wave of data for the period 2017-2020 has caused us to revisit these questions and compare the results with those from ten years ago. We have also ranked countries according to their relative increase or decline in secularity and noted which countries have moved most significantly up or down in the ranking.

The new EVS data from 2017-2020 suggests that Czechia, Sweden and the Netherlands are the most secularised countries in Europe and that Turkey and Romania are the least secularised. When we compare the 2017-2020 NIS values with those from 2008 it is clear that, in the vast majority of countries, a degree of secularisation is continuing, and in some countries markedly so.

The countries showing the biggest change over this period were the Netherlands, Portugal and Italy indicating that these are the countries where secularisation is occurring most rapidly at present.

Only two countries show any significant opposite trend Albania, and most notably, Germany. This striking result caused us to do some further investigation and, in particular, to consider if there might be a sampling error.

Given the significant arrival of Muslim refugees into Germany and some other countries a quick check was made of the percentage of Muslims in the datasets from 2008 and 2017, and this was then compared with the Pew Research Center data from their 2017 report, Europes Growing Muslim Population.

The higher percentage of Muslims in the 2017-20 Germany sample relative to 2008 may help to explain some of the secularisation, but more generally, these percentages show a significant under-sampling of Muslims in the EVS when compared to the Pew 2017 study.

NIS1 Do you believe in God?

Sweden, Czechia and the Netherlands showed the highest NIS values for this question, though the high percentage of Czechs (16%) who did not give an answer may have skewed the numbers. 61% of Swedes, 53% of Dutch, 51% of Brits and Norwegians, and 50% of Czechs say they do not believe in God.

When we compare the two waves of EVS data for this question, we note that Great Britain, Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark have less belief than in 2008 but Germany appears to have more. Looking at the data in more detail we note that the number of those saying they believed in God in GB has fallen from 57.7% in 2008 to 47.8% in 2017-20, whereas in Germany it has risen from 43.3% in 2008 to 58.2% in 2017.

NIS2 How important is religion in your life?

As authors like Kasselstrand have observed, secularity is a complex phenomena and measures of indifference to religion are also required. Using our index, the top three countries on this measure were Czechia, Denmark and Sweden and the bottom three were Turkey, Greece and Romania.

Once again the longitudinal comparison throws up some interesting observations. The Netherlands, Denmark and Turkey show a lessening of importance of religion whereas in Albania and Germany the opposite trend could be noted.

NIS3 Do you consider yourself a religious person, not a religious person or a convinced atheist?

We might ask if this trichotomous question is really an effective way to explore religious (or irreligious) identity, but it does at least enable us to make comparisons. Sweden, France and Czechia show themselves to have the highest secularity on this measure whereas Romania, Poland and Greece show themselves to have the lowest. Yet here perhaps the raw data is more illustrative. Whereas Sweden shows itself to have the lowest percentage of people who self-identify as religious (26.7%) it is France that has the highest percentage of convinced atheists (22.7%).

The longitudinal comparison however reveals some even more surprising shifts. The country with the biggest NIS3 difference was Ukraine, which on closer inspection was largely down to a striking decrease in the number of people who say they are religious, down from 81,8% in 2008 to 59.3% in 2017-20. In fact, most countries showed a secularising tendency in this measure. The one exception again was Germany showing a marked rise in the number of religious people from 35% in 2008 to 52% in 2017. Some of this can be explained perhaps by the greater number of Muslims in the sample but once again, it runs against the general trend in the rest of the data.

NIS4 How often do you attend religious services?

This is a measure of religious participation which serves as another take on measuring secularity. At the top of the 2017-20 league table are Czechia, France and Sweden and at the bottom we find Poland, Romania and Greece. Whereas in Poland an astonishing 47.1% of people say they attend a religious service at least once a week, the lowest percentages of attendance are to be found in Denmark (2.5%), Finland (4.6%), Sweden (5.3%) and Norway (5.6%). What is interesting to note in the case of all of these Scandanavian countries is that, though they have the lowest weekly attendance, many still do attend church at some point during the year. The highest percentage of those who never attend a religious service is in France (63%), Czechia (61%) and Britain (60%).

Perhaps the most striking change between 2008 and 2017-20 corresponds to none of the aforementioned countries but rather to Portugal. There was a drop in at least weekly attendance from 32% in 2008 to 17.5% in 2017-20, and a rise in those who never attend a religious service from 18.5% to 31% over the same period.

NIS5 How much confidence do you have in the church?

The lowest level of confidence in the church, and therefore the highest degree of secularity, corresponds in this case to Czechia, Netherlands and Spain. Conversely Romania, Ukraine and Turkey show the highest levels of confidence.

When a longitudinal comparison is made between 2008 and 2017-20, Turkey, Romania and Croatia show the greatest decline, though in the first two cases this was from a very high level. Perhaps more interesting are the countries that show some recovery of confidence in the church since 2008: Greece, Finland, Norway and Sweden. In the case of the Nordic countries, it is notable that high levels of secularity, or even increasing degrees of secularity by some measures, do not necessarily mean that confidence in the church as an institution is also decreasing.

NIS6 How often do you pray to God outside of religious services?

Europe is frequently characterised as a secular continent, yet a striking number of Europeans continue to pray regularly. Even in the most secular countries, around one in every six or seven pray at least once a week: Czechia (15.1%), Sweden (15.7%) and Denmark (13.5%). Having said that, in all of those countries, more than half of the people say they never pray. The countries which pray the most are Romania, Albania and Turkey, with 79.8%, 79.2% and 77.5% respectively praying at least once a week.

Europe is frequently characterised as a secular continent, yet a striking number of Europeans continue to pray regularly

When we compare the latest wave of EVS data with that which was obtained in 2008, we note that prayer is becoming less frequent in Portugal, Turkey, Netherlands, Italy and Spain, and more frequent in Albania, Germany and Greece. Once again, a closer analysis of the actual data reveals fascinating details in these shifts. In 2008, 59.1% of Portuguese people said they prayed at least once a week but by 2017-20 this had fallen to 40.4%. Likewise, the number of those who said they never prayed in 2008 was just 15.8%, but by 2017-20 this had risen to 29.5%.

The 2017-2020 EVS data suggests that secularisation in Europe is continuing and it is occurring most rapidly in the Netherlands, Portugal and Italy. However, when we take a closer look at the six different secularisation measures, we get a more nuanced picture.

On that basis, the most rapid secularisation is taking place in Britain (NIS1 belief in God), Netherlands (NIS2 importance of religion), Ukraine (NIS3-self-identifiction as religious), Portugal (NIS4-attendance), Turkey (NIS5-confidence in church) and Portugal again (NIS6-prayer).

The German data raises a lot of questions and should perhaps be handled cautiously. Though some of the uptick in religiosity may be due to the arrival of significant numbers of migrants during 2015/16, closer inspection suggests that Muslims were under-represented in the sample in both 2008 and 2017. It is unclear how much of the apparent increase in religious belief and practice in Germany is due to a higher number of practicing Muslims being included in 2017 relative to 2008.

In conclusion, the data suggests that secularisation in Europe is continuing but that each country may well have its own trajectory. The most secularised countries are not necessarily the most atheist, suggesting that indifference to religion is the end result of secularisation rather than atheism.

Secularity and irreligiosity are not the same thing and this has significant consequences for Christian mission. Apologetics that is targeted on atheism is only reaching a tiny proportion of Europes population. The much greater challenge is reaching the huge number of unbelieving Europeans who are indifferent to Christianity and consider religion an irrelevance in modern life.

Jim Memory, church planter and lecturer in European Mission at Redcliffe College (UK). This article first appeared in the May 2021 edition of Vista Magazine.

Kasselstrand (2019), "Secularity and Irreligion in Cross-National Context: A Non-Linear Approach" in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 58(3):626-642

Pew (2017), Europe's Growing Muslim Population, https://www.pewforum.org/2017/11/29/europes-growing-muslim-population/

Memory (2010), Measuring Secularity in Europe in Vista 3:5,6 https://www.europeanmission.redcliffe.ac.uk/s/Vista-October-2010.pdf

The rest is here:

Secularity and irreligion in Europe - Evangelical Focus