You talk a lot about toleration and conformism and how
monopolies work. Do you see any
overall trends in Europe right now?
Yeah, I think Europe is coming
apart at the state church level, and we see finally, despite all the
resistance, the breaking out of some competition.
In Western Europe?
I’m think about Scandinavia, and
France, and Belgium and Germany and what-not. It looks like the tide is shifting, that religion’s picking
up – I know that there’s been a considerable rise in religiousness in Italy,
for example.
Is that within the Catholic Church, or within
Protestant denominations?
It’s a lot of things. There's been quite a bit of competition
for the tax-withholding. And it's
led to a heck of a lot of advertising every spring – you know, "Mark us down
for your tax withholding." See you
have to pay a church tax, and you can pay it to anybody you want. And it’s like some big campaigns seem
to have stimulated religious interest more generally. Church attendance is up a lot, especially among young people
– and so is belief.
I’m also connected with an institution that I never go
to, the University of Wales. I’m
doing a doctorate at the Oxford Centre for Missions Studies right now, so I have the privilege of spending a
lot of time in Oxford. And I’ve
been very impressed by how alive the church is there. They’re all Anglican, but there’s evangelical Anglican,
there’s charismatic Anglican, there’s high church …
Yeah, well, they’re starting to
break up. They’re starting to work
at attracting followers. That’s
the thing that’s missing! You’ve
got state churches – the check comes, and I don’t care. But I have to care – suddenly I have an
empty church and no check!
That’s sounds, I don’t know …
Oh, it sounds terrible!
It sounds cynical, worldly …
No, but it’s just human
nature! My word! "I'm not motivated, I'm really pretty
lazy." – "You ought to be motivated for God!" Yeah, right, (but) maybe you’re not even attracting people
like that into the clergy! In
Germany, the union contract for clergy says that if fewer than eight people
show up, you don’t have to hold church! If I were over there, I’d make my services so dreadful I’d never get
eight people! (Laughter.)
But if you’re sitting out there,
some little Baptist preacher says, "If I don’t increase attendance I’m not
going to get a check!" It makes a
difference! And I see nothing
wrong – hell, the key to success, at least in (America) and I would suggest
anywhere, is having a really vibrant religion!
The reason that the liberal churches
have been slumping in this country for a hundred years is because when you get
there, they don’t hold church! I
don’t need to go to some Episcopal church to hear how terrible it is that there
are people who don’t like homosexuals, or that there are starving children in
the world – you get plenty of that. The High Churches have an advantage in that, at all levels across the
spectrum, they do somewhat better than their somewhat similar Low Church
neighbors. Because the liturgy
takes out of the priest’s hands the ability to trash the service, if you
will. I have a Catholic friend who
put it really well. He said, "We
just despise our parish pastor. We
just don't listen to the homily. The rest of the time, he's got to say Mass." (Laughter)