Europe’s Changing Faith: Christianity in a Multicultural World – SEDOS – SERVICE OF DOCUMENTATION AND STUDY ON GLOBAL MISSION

Introduction

Up to the years of the students’ rebellion in the whole Western World between1968 to 1972, the Catholic and Protestant Mission continued to send huge numbers of missionaries to Africa, Asia, Oceania, and Latin America. Since 1972 the number of men and women from Europe and North America sent to work in non-Western countries decreased, only Poland continued to have a boon of vocation for the priesthood and religious and missionary life until the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

The division of Europe into a Western and Eastern Block however, had a big impact on the people living in the post-war years of Europe. Two different mentalities developed, not only in the society, but also in the churches of the divided East and West.

Thirty-four years later, the different ways of understanding and participating in society and in church life were still being felt, but there is also a new generation emerging who are more influenced by the use of mobile communication and social media with all its ambivalent impact on the younger generation born in the 21st century.

There is no doubt that the process of secularization was accelerated by the cyber world and by the pandemic years in the early 2020s, not only in the Western world, but worldwide.

Wars and natural disaster have pushed more people from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean to look for security and a better life in Western countries, especially in Europe and the USA. The huge number of migrant and asylum seekers in 2015, most of them having settled in Germany, caused the rising of nationalistic parties in all Western European countries.

The liberation of countries from European colonial powers in the decades after World War II, especially United Kingdom, France, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands and Portugal, always went along with the migration of people from the former colonies to the countries who had previously colonized them. That happened, of course, in different stages according to the years of independence and therefore these countries had much earlier than other European countries, huge numbers of people originating from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.

Another huge wave of legal immigration towards European countries was caused by the economic recovery of post-war Europe, especially in Germany, being the spearhead for this movement as its economic leadership for an industrial country in Europe.

After World War II, Germany had to integrate 12 million ethnic Germans from former East Germany and also from several Eastern and South-Eastern European countries in to its country where millions of houses were destroyed by the war. While its industrial production was in need of more workers, Germany did not receive them as in previous times from its eastern neighbours, as they were blocked by the Iron Curtain and therefore Germany had to start, in the early 1960s, to call for workers, first from Italy, Spain, Portugal and Yugoslavia, and later on in even bigger numbers from Turkey. France integrated a million Portuguese workers in those years, too.

Scandinavian countries, with their liberal laws under a Social Democratic government, accepted, during the last four decades, many Asylum seekers from all over the world, a lot of them with a Muslim background. The countries of Eastern Europe, liberated from the Soviet Union, had not had prior to 1990, much experience with people from overseas. Communist East Germany allowed a certain number of workers from other Socialist countries, like Angola, Mozambique and Vietnam, to work in their country. However, they were isolated from its own citizens.

Since 1990, a huge number of Poles also came to work in Germany, the UK and Ireland. Women from Poland, Romania and other smaller countries in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe were in great demand to take care of elderly people and as household workers in nearly all Western European countries, as it was done before for several decades by women from the Philippines, who immigrated to countries worldwide where there was a demand for work.^[1]

This brief overview shows the history of migration since 1945 which differs greatly among European nations and internationally. The most recent huge migration wave was/has been caused by the war which Russia started by Russia to conquer and devour the Ukrainian nation. Germany and Poland have taken one million people each, mainly women and children, the biggest/largest number of people from Ukraine, fleeing the war. As a result of these migration waves towards European countries, its population has changed enormously in the last decades. European, especially West European societies are now more intercultural, a mixture of people from various parts of the world. The low birth rate in European countries since the 1970s, has caused the shrinking of its population. This is why many jobs cannot be filled by people from the aging continent, and are therefore sought for from countries beyond Europe. The obstacles to get a work permit for jobs within the health sector or as computer programmer or as any craftsman etc., has been levelled recently by many governments throughout Europe in order to receive more skilled workers in these areas of expertise.

[1] Paul B. Steffen, “Migrant Ministry: The Kairos for a Pastoral-Missionary Work”. Verbum SVD 51:3 (2010) 313-340; Id., “The Evangelizing Power of Migrant Ministry. Towards a Theology of Migration”, in: Damien Cichy (red.), Mission of the Church and Human Migration, Warszawa 2014, 341-351.

A new understanding of mission and pastoral ministry

To comprehend the topic of this article, one must first have a look at the changes in the understanding of pastoral, mission and evangelization.

It is often not sufficiently understood that the renewal of pastoral ministry and missionary activity, already underway since the 1920s, allows Vatican II and even more so post-Vatican II, practical theology to overcome the dualism which had developed between the pastoral and missionary aspects of the church’s life. This artificial dichotomy of putting pastoral ministry and missionary activity into two separate categories, was practiced for centuries in the Catholic church. Historical developments in and outside the Catholic church made this separation obsolete.^[1]

According to the Indian Practical theologian Francis-Vincent Anthony, pastoral highlights the aspect of care and guidance that characterizes the work of the church, evangelization emphasizes the communicative dimension of this practice, and mission emphasizes the mandate inherent in the action of the church.^[2]

The impact of the newcomers to European society and churches

This is having a tremendous impact on Christianity in Europe. There is no more only a European Christianity found in Europe, but also an Asian, African, Caribbean and Latin American one. They are found mainly in places where the new Europeans settle, like in capitals, industrial regions, and in harbour cities, like Hamburg, Marseille etc. Normally, the first generation of newcomers to Europe want to continue their religious beliefs with people coming from the same country of origin and talking the same language. Culture, Religion, language, food and inherited world views and customs bind them together and give them the strength they need to settle within a new country with a different culture, language, tradition and mentality. But when the children of the first migrant generation are growing up and receiving education in Europe, the need to relate to the traditional citizens of the countries which have become their new home, is getting more urgent. This motivates, for instance, many Filipino Catholics to attend not only the Filipino Sunday Eucharistic community, but to attend as well the Italian, German, Dutch, French, or English, etc. Sunday Mass, conducted in the national language of the county they are living in now.

Churches therefore play an outstanding role integrating the newcomers with their double strategy that allows the migrated Christians to participate in liturgies with people of the same language and ethnic background, and inviting them, at the same time, to join the local parish communities.

The Filipinos in Rome, e.g., have over 53 Sunday Liturgy communities, mainly being organized according to the regional and linguistic background, while coming from their multilinguistic and multi-ethnic home country.

The lack of ordained ministers made the European churches more receptive for ministers, pastors and priests from non-Western countries. That’s why we should also mention those “ecclesial” migrants. They often serve their own ethnic communities, and even more the local Christian communities.

Evangelical and Pentecostal Christian communities of Africans, Asians, Caribbean’s and Latin Americans are found in all larger towns in Europe. According to their self-image, they belief that they have a special mission to evangelise the people of Europe. That is the reason why their missiologists use for this the term: Mission in reverse. Nevertheless, “The terms ‘reverse mission’ is a contested one” says theologian Dorottya Nagy from the Protestant University of Amsterdam.^[3] But there is a gap between their claim of outreaching to secularised Europeans and what they really are doing or are able to do as marginal minorities, and where their type of Christianity is not much spread and liked. The phenomena which happen in non-Western countries, where Evangelical and Pentecostal are very attractive and where they are steadily growing, is not found in secular Europe. This is the reason why a Protestant theologian states:

Experience has shown that migrant congregations, contrary to their sometimes explicitly missionary claim vis-à-vis their German secularised environment, have hardly any missionary impact on their context.^[4]

In mainland churches, including the Lutheran, Reformed and Catholic one, this term is hardly found. Indian or African priests working in European parishes normally do not understand their service as missionary work, but just as a pastoral ministry. They understand themselves therefore not as missionaries, but as intercultural church workers.

[1] P. B. Steffen, “Missiological Education”, in: Jacob Kavunkal – Christian Tauchner (eds.), Mission beyond Ad Gentes. A Symposium, (Studia Instituti Missiologici SVD 104), Franz Schmitt Verlag, Siegburg 2016, 194-222; Id., “Shift of Mission Paradigm in the Church: A New Way of Learning and Relating”: Abuja Journal of Philosophy and Theology (APT) 11 (2021) 21 – 35; Id., “Geschichte des Missionsverständnisses. Die Entwicklung des Missionsbegriffs seit dem Zweiten Vatikanum“: Forum Weltkirche 140, 5 (2021), 12-16; Id., „Selbstverständnis, Schwerpunkte und Perspektiven der Missionswissenschaft in den beiden ersten Jahrzehnten des 21. Jahrhunderts, aufgezeigt am Beispiel der Praktisch-kontextuellen Theologie“. Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft (ZMR) 107 (2023), 41; Id., Practical Missiology or Practical Theology with Missionary Perspective? The Transformation of Missiology before and after Vatican II”. Ishvani Documentation and Mission Digest 35 (2017) 2, 146-16.

[2] Francis-Vincent Anthony, “Una Pastorale in prospettiva missionaria,” in: Istituto di Teologia Pastorale, Pastorale giovanile (Leumann, To: Elledici, 2003), 97-109; see Giovanni Colombo, “Pastorale missionaria,” in Pontificia Università Urbaniana, Dizionario di Missiologia (Bologna: EDB, 1993), 393-397.

[3]Dorottya Nagy, Mission irreversible: Reflections on secularization and reversed mission in contemporary Europe, Conference: NIM Symposium 2019: Western secularization and reversed Christian mission, Nijmegen Institute for Mission Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, 4 October 2019, p. 4, in: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345978432_Mission_irreversible_Reflections_on_secularization_and_reversed_mission_in_contemporary_Europe (accessed 15.05.2023); Cf. Claudia Währisch-Oblau, “Mission in Reverse: Whose Image in the Mirror?”: Anvil a journal of theology and mission, 18:4 (2001), 261-267; Oseias da Silva, “Reverse mission in the Western context”: HOLINESS, 1:2 (2015) 231–244; Andreas Heuser, “Umkehrmission – Vom Abgesang eines Mythos im Treppenhaus migratorischer Ökumene“: Interkulturelle Theologie, 42:1 (2016), 25-54; Karel A. Steenbrink, Jonah: From a prophetic mission in reverse to inter-religious dialogue: International Review of Mission, 91 (2002), 360, 41-51; Anthony J. Gittins, Reflections from the edge : Mission-in-reverse and missiological research: Missiology, 21:1(1993), 21-29.

[4]Ulrich Dehn, „Migration im Kontext: Motivgeschichtliche und diasporaltheoretische Perspektiven“. Interkulturellle Theologie, 37.2/3 (2011), 155.

Faith lived in a secular context

A big challenge for the Europeans is the rapid changing society and its cultures and religions. The French theologian Bernard Ugeux gives us in his analysis on European Post-Enlightenment societies an interesting insight:

It has been said often enough: The West, whose level of development is envied by others, is experiencing an ever-increasing feeling of vulnerability. This is linked to the acceleration of societal and technological change and the ensuing ethical questions; to the increasingly complex nature of economic, political and scientific problems encountered; to the cultural and religious diversity of the West that some people find threatening to their own identity; to the deregulation of institutions such as church, state or education; to the inability of society to offer a collective project other than the valorisation of progress as understood by the mentality of the market.^[1]

The same author treats the critique of relevant parts of modern society on the Christian faith as represented and practiced by the churches: “Many of those who are searching for meaning often have an axe to grind with Judeo-Christianity, in particular with the institutional church. They are more open to the spiritualities or therapies proposed by the “New Age movement” or to traditions that come from the Far-East.

They also sometimes tend to be aggressive towards Christianity, criticizing it as too dogmatic, moralistic, as having disdain for both the physical and emotional life, to/too prescriptive in the way believers have to take, and too great a distance between the official discourse of the church and believers’ real lives. Whether or not these criticisms are justified, they have to be heard.”^[2] Then Bernard Ugeux, previously rector of the Université Catholique of Toulouse, raises the question that really matters: “Why do all these people go elsewhere? Why do they feel disappointed and suspicious towards Christianity (especially when they are in the midst of difficulties)?”

The number of unchurched citizens has increased all over Europe. The highest percentage is found in the Netherlands, Czech Republic and East Germany and in all the larger cities like London, Berlin, Hamburg and Paris. The number of practicing Christians has dropped to under 15 percent, often even under 8 percent and in cities the percentage is even lower. Practicing Christians are becoming in most parts of Europe a minority, with some exceptions, like in Poland and Slovakia.

The lack of ordained, celibate-living, ministers in nearly all European countries, with some exceptions, push the bishops to create even greater Pastoral Units, combining up to 10 former parishes into one pastoral unit. Meanwhile they merge several legally erected parishes into one new parish.

The diocese of Trier decided to make out its formerly over 900 parishes into only 34 parishes.^[3] These new parishes and their ministers have to take care of huge areas. They often even used parish ecclesiology by communio of communities (EG 28), even under Pope Francis, which has never been put into practise in the Catholic churches in Europe. They struggle to find solutions with little success, as Bernhard Spielberg, the Pastoral theologian of Freiburg University, has proved.^[4]

The French bishops wrote in November 1996 a letter to the French Catholics Proposer la foi dans la société actuelle (Propose faith in today’s society). The letter shows how advanced the awareness and reflection, based on concrete experience and understanding of the real situation in the Catholic communities, is among the bishops.

[1] Bernard Ugeux, “Questions which new spiritualities pose to evangelization in Europe”. International Review of Mission, 95, 378/379, July/October (2006), 328.

[2] Ibid. 325.

[3] Cf. Paul B. Steffen, “The Pastoral Mission of the Churches in Europe: Towards contextualized and participative Christian communities in a secular and plural Western society”. Word and Worship 53.1-2 (2020), 72-100.

[4] Bernhard Spielberg, Kann Kirche noch Gemeinde sein? Praxis, Probleme und Perspektiven der Kirche vor Ort, Würzburg, Echter, 2008; cf. on Spielberg in: P. B. Steffen, Centres of Formation and Evangelizing Ministry: Pastoral Institutes in Oceania and Africa, (Studia Instituti Missiologici SVD – 102), F. Schmitt Verlag, Siegburg 2014, 174-175.

The letter states:

Faced with the temptation to resentment, which leads to seeking and denouncing those responsible for this crisis, we wish to reaffirm what the report on the proposition of faith has already expressed: we accept without hesitation to situate ourselves, as Catholics, in the cultural and institutional context of today, marked in particular by the emergence of individualism and the principle of secularism. We refuse any nostalgia for past eras when the principle of authority seemed to prevail indisputably. We do not dream of an impossible return to what was called Christendom.^[1]

The French Bishops wrote to French Catholics in 1996:

To you, too, who are interested in … the future of the Christian faith in our secular society, even if you do not share this faith, we propose this letter, desiring that it helps to facilitate real dialogue and fair discussion. Because our intention is primarily educational and pastoral, we are addressing personal freedoms, not to impose what is already acquired, but to encourage the pursuit of the process of discernment that has already been started. That is why this letter includes three approaches that seem to us inseparable from each other and in which we want to engage with all our local churches, in the diversity of groups and organizations that constitute them.

First of all, to face the real situation of lived faith: to understand our situation as Catholics in today’s society.
The next step is to highlight the strengths and points of the experience as they emerge from this effort of understanding: Go to the heart of the mystery of Faith.
Finally, it is about designing projects so that the Gospel of Christ is effectively lived and proclaimed in and by the Church: To form a Church that proposes the faith.”^[2]

The letter of the French bishops was well received by theologians, church leaders and interested Christians in all neighbouring countries since its language and contents addressed situations in a new way and animated people in most European countries to find new ways of witnessing the faith in Christ in a secular context.

The new visions of documents from the papal magisterium and from the National Bishops conferences, like the ones from Italy Il volto missionario delle parrocchie in un mondo che cambia, Nota pastorale dell’Episcopato italiano (The missionary face of parishes in a changing world. Pastoral Note of the Italian Episcopate) from 2004, are inspiring.

The Italian bishops were concerned about the institution of the parish in their country. Many saw the parish in a crisis. Nevertheless, parishes still play, in Italian society and in the church, a comparatively important role. If the vision of the above-mentioned document would be lived out, it would need to develop a participating church in Italy which is Kingdom and not priest centred.

The German bishops published, in 2015, the document Gemeinsam Kirche sein with the subtitle Wort der deutschen Bischöfe zur Erneuerung der Pastoral (Being Church Together. Word of the German Bishops to Renew Pastoral Ministry). The document stresses that “through baptism, every Christian is called” to live out their baptismal vocation in the Church and that “the many charisms are the richness of the Church”.^[3]

All those documents show how serious the bishops in Europe take the challenges in church and society. They indicate new ways of living the mission to evangelise the churches in Europe and how much the bishops were ready to develop an adequate pastoral and practical theology, a theology of ministry, not only for ordained ministers but even more so for all members of the Church, for all God’s people.

It is difficult to say how much those episcopal letters have made an impact on the life of the churches and the Christians as such. For many Christians these letters remain highly idealistic and far away from the problems they have as ordinary believers.

[1] Lettre aux catholiques de France : « Proposer la foi dans la société actuelle », Lourdes, 9.11.1996.

[2]Ibid.

[3]„Gemeinsam Kirche sein“. Wort der deutschen Bischöfe zur Erneuerung der Pastoral, 1. August 2015.

Is a paradigm change needed for the churches in Europe?

Karl Rahner^[1] and before him Josef Andreas Jungmann^[2], both have taught at the Jesuit Faculty of Innsbruck, Tyrol in Austria, put the human being and his faith experience next to the Holy Scripture and ecclesial tradition, into the centre of their theology; that’s why this was called the anthropological turn in modern theology.

This anthropological turn in theology made a great impact in the way Catechetics and Religious instruction is given nowadays and how faith is lived in a secular and plural context. Looking at the literature for those fields from 1950 and 1960 and comparing the content in the books published in the last four decades, the changes are outstanding and irreversible. Christian faith has found its way into the 21^st century and that faith is now mostly taught and transmitted into a deductive but primarily in to an inductive way.

David J. Bosch Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, first published in 1991 and translated into many languages, has become the missiological standard work in almost all Christian churches, especially for Christians engaged in teaching and practising the transforming power of mission.

Bosch attempts with the aid of the idea of paradigm shifts… to demonstrate the extent to which the understanding and practice of mission have changed over almost twenty centuries of Christian missionary history. In some instances, the transformation was so profound and far-reaching that the historian has difficulty to recognize any similarities between the different missionary models. Bosch is convinced ‘that this process of transformation has not yet come to an end (and will, in fact, never come to an end), and that we are ourselves, at the moment, in the midst of one of the most important shifts in the understanding and practice of the Christian mission.^[3]

A paradigm shift is often seen, or still in the need to be seen, as a whole of the transmitting the faith and in the finding of new ways to witness the Good News in secular societies. This touches also all ministries and ministers of the churches. The US-American lay theologian, Edward Hahnenberg, remarks: “Ministry begins when one life touches another. It is a way of relating a relationship.” Hahnenberg offers us “a relational approach of understanding the diverse modes of service active in the church”.^[4]

The Austrian Practical theologian Paul M. Zulehner

points out, that behind the central issue of mission, there is the question of the Church’s vision, by which Pope Francis is guided in his pontificate. It is characterised by the renouncement of a moralizing approach in favour of healing and a therapeutic approach on the part of the Church in which Pope Francis refers to a hierarchy of truth and of compassion as the guiding principles in pastoral care. Zulehner draws attention to an ecclesiological realignment, which he sees in a decentralisation of the Church and also in raising of the status of the local churches by even granting a local magisterium in the Apostolic Exhortation. With this in mind, Paul M. Zulehner remarks, that the Church must be freed of its structural, middleclass-focused self-aspiration, for “the Church will only be healed by finding its way to the people on the periphery of life.^[5]

According to Pope Francis “we are not only living in a time of changes but are experiencing a true epochal shift, marked by a wide-ranging “anthropological” and “environmental crisis”. Indeed, we daily see “signs that things are now reaching a breaking point, due to the rapid pace of change and degradation; these are in large-scale evident natural disasters as well as social and even financial crises.”^[6]

For Mariano Delgado, diversity is anchored and united in Christ. “If we take the anthropology of the Council seriously, this means… the change from a deductive theology to an inductive one, “which truly shares and perceives as locus theologicus the joy and hope, sorrow and anguish of man today, especially of the poor and afflicted of all kinds” (GS 1). It also means the change from a teaching church to a listening, dialogical church.”^[7]

In previous times diversity and plurality were seen as a threat to church unity:

Because many Christians find this diversity problematic, they have taken measures for uniformity, which unfortunately is often mistaken as uninformed. However, if we admit that the principle of incarnation leads to the acceptance of diversity, in accordance to God’s plan the world is and should be diverse (also religiously), then a rethinking of the role of the bearer of God’s message is more than necessary. Above all, it requires a thorough transformation of missionary practice and the mentality that surrounds it.^[8]

Integrating migrants and refugees: The new mission of the churches in Europe

In Germany, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference published, in 2021, a joint statement with the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany in cooperation with the Council of Christian Churches in Germany Shaping Migration in a Humane Manner.^[9]

In the Preface to the English translation we read:

When the Joint Statement of the churches in Germany on migration was published in October 2021, hardly anyone expected that a major war would break out in our European neighbourhood just a few months later. The Russian attack on Ukraine is bringing immeasurable suffering to the civilian population and has led to the largest, fastest-growing movement of refugees on our continent since the end of World War II. At the same time, it is upsetting the foundations of peaceful coexistence in Europe and worldwide.^[10]

The huge migration wave to Germany was responded by a huge wave of labour for the refugees. The churches embraced this new mission with great dedication, especially at grassroot level in parishes and neighbourhoods and families.

Since the beginning of the war, the churches have been working vigorously to provide necessary humanitarian assistance and to facilitate a humane reception for refugees. There is a powerful commitment at all levels of church life: in congregations, parishes and dioceses, in religious orders and associations, in welfare organisations and relief agencies. Well-proven structures from previous years are being reactivated and expanded, new initiatives are emerging – often in good partnership with local authorities or civil society actors.^[11]

The churches’ argument is obvious: “Against the background of current troubles, the churches’ firm commitment to a just migration and refugee policy, to overcoming global injustice, and to a sustainable peace order is more necessary than ever.”^[12]

The Christian churches are today among the strongest advocates for the right of migrants and refuges not only in Germany, but in most European countries.

Pope Francis himself is the outstanding advocate and promoter for creating a welcoming culture for the migrants and defender of their human rights.

This is clear to be seen since the migration wave has also helped right wing parties to gain more followers in many European countries, which is often experienced as a threat to European democracies.

[1] The Italian theologian R. Gibellini wrote “Rahner’s genius lies in having introduced a new method in theology, where the datum of faith is not simply handed down and illustrated in its traditional content, but is put in correspondence with man’s experience of himself; it is not just a matter of knowing the faith, but of understanding life. To the scholastic method, then in vogue in schools of theology, which proceeds from the top of formulations and operates by proposing doctrines, indoctrinating as it were, he prefers the anthropological method, which proceeds from the bottom and operates a correspondence between life and truth, between experience and concept. Because of this interpretation, Rahner’s theology represents the most vigorous contribution within Catholic theology to what has been called the ‘anthropological turn’ in theology.” (my translation), in:

https://www.queriniana.it/blog/la-teologia-di-karl-rahner-per-un-alleanza-tra-missione-e-ragione- 29 (accessed 19.05.2023)

[2] Josef A. Jungmann SJ 1889-1975. Born in Austria in 1889, Jungmann spent most of his career as professor of Pastoral Theology at the University of Innsbruck, where he taught both catechetics and liturgy. His name is synonymous with the “kerygmatic renewal” in Catholic catechetics. His career and contribution blur the lines of distinction between liturgical studies and catechetics because he promoted an interest in early church practices that integrated worship and catechesis. His programmatic work on the kerygmatic renewal in catechetics was first published in 1936 under the title Die Frohbotschaft und unsere Glaubensverkündigung (The Good News and Our Proclamation of the Faith). Rome demanded the withdrawal of his book. After Vatican II it was translated into English. While Jungmann is well known for this work in catechetics, his name is also associated with the renewal of the Eucharistic liturgy at Vatican Council II (1962-65). His historical study of the Eucharistic liturgy, the Mass of the Roman Rite, made him a natural choice as a peritus (expert) at Vatican II and a member of the commission that had principal responsibility for the composition of the document on the renewed Catholic Eucharistic liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, promulgated by the Second Vatican Council in 1964.

[3] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), xv., quoted in: P. B. Steffen, “From Maximum illud to Evangelii gaudium to Trends in Contemporary Theology and Praxis of Mission”: The Abuja Journal of Philosophy and Theology (APT) 10 (2020), 1-23.

[4] Edward Hahnenberg, Ministries. A Relational Approach (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003), 4.

[5] Klaus Krämer – Klaus Vellguth, “Preface”, in Evangelii Gaudium. Voices of the Universal Church, (One World Theology – 7), ed. Klaus Krämer – Klaus Vellguth, (Quezon City, Claretian Publications, Philippines, 2015): X.

[6] “Foreword”, in: Pope Francis, Apostolic Constitution Veritatis Gaudium on Ecclesiastical Universities and Faculties, Vatican City 2017, 3.

[7]Mariano Delgado, „Der Mensch als Träger der Evangelisierung“. Verbum SVD 60:4 (2019), 322; cf. P. B. Steffen, “The Contribution of Pastoral Institutes for an Inculturated and Contextualized Ministry”. Asia Pacific Mission Studies 2.2 (2020), 32-58.

[8]Stan Grodz, “The Sender—The Message—The Messenger”. Verbum SVD 60:4 (2019) 337.

[9] Shaping Migration in a Humane Manner. Joint Statement by the German Bishops’ Conference and the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany in cooperation with the Council of Christian Churches in Germany, Published by Protestant Church in Germany &Secretariat of the German Bishops’ Conference, Hannover – Bonn, 21.10.2021

[10] Ibid., 9.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

The joint declaration of the Christian churches in Germany argues very differently as the right-wing parties do. For the churches “Migration affects all people: those who set out voluntarily or are forced to leave their homes, as well as those who have never had the experience of living in a foreign country.”^[1]

Their main argument is:

Shaping migration in a humane manner” – this is the guiding principle by which the churches in Germany are defining their new Joint Statement on Migration. Europe and the wider world have experienced significant changes since the churches released their first Joint Statement on Migration in 1997.”^[2]

The Covid-19 pandemic made the engagement for people, forced to leave their countries, even more important. Therefore, the joint statement argues:

The Covid-19 pandemic led to hitherto inconceivable restrictions on human mobility, exacerbating or at least highlighting the more challenging aspects of migration. Questions of health protection, educational equity, the promotion of families, good working conditions and adequate housing are highly relevant to all of society at present. But under the conditions of the pandemic, they have a particularly existential significance for migrants, especially for those seeking protection or for people with a precarious status.^[3]

In 2019, the German Bishops published the document Evangelisierung und Globalisierung, a thought-provoking reflection on Evangeliz-ation and globalization.^[4] In this document the German Bishops intended to find answers to three questions that move them:

How can the gospel of Jesus Christ be “translated” and understood linguistically and culturally in today’s context?
What are the challenges of globalization and secularization in today’s contexts?
How can the faith community of the church develop missionary perspectives and concretise options?

The German bishops point on/to the process of globalisation and pluralisation:

Globalisation is closely linked to the processes of secularisation and pluralisation that have become a defining feature of many societies, not only in the countries of the West but worldwide. These processes, which have also been partly promoted by Christianity itself, bring with them many challenges for societies as well as for religions. Secularisation and pluralisation are structural features of modern societies, through which the sole interpretative sovereignty of religion has been broken.^[5]

Since mission had become very unpopular among many Christians and even theologians, the German bishop’s/Bishops felt the need to advocate a new understanding of mission and evangelization work at home and abroad. “The topic of the new ‘mission word’ of the German Bishops’ conference ties in with the bishops’ words Time for sowing. Being a Missionary Church (2000) and All Nations His Salvation. The Mission of the World Church (2004), which in turn endeavoured to sharpen the understanding of mission and evangelisation among Catholics in Germany.”^[6]

All those episcopal documents show that the bishops did not shy away from the task to convince the faithful of the work of evangelization in our secular context and time.

Concluding remarks

This paper intends to show how the local churches (dioceses) in European countries like France, Italy and Germany are looking for new ways to overcome the crisis of Christians, especially the Catholic churches on the old continent.

Europe’s Mediterranean coastlands came very early into contact with the Christian faith; Central and Northern European countries, already since the fourth century, if they had been part of the Roman Empire; in other parts of Europe the Good News reached the people on the following centuries (5^th to 9^th century); the latest countries where the Baltic states were Christianity was embraced in the Middle Ages (13^th century).

Christianity had become an integral part of the European nations and peoples. Normally, they became Christians just by transmitting the Christian faith from one generation to the next. This type of Christianity in feudal societies is called Christendom or Cristianità in Italian or Christenheit in German. Typical of this kind of Christianism is that the Christian faith was acquired naturally through their socialization. People were, as it can be called, Christians by birth.

Here lies in a secular and plural society the biggest problem for the European churches. The secularisation process has brought down the model of Christendom, which was in power for thousands of years.

Today’s Europeans have to choose to accept the Christian faith, even if they come from Christian families; it is no longer automatically guaranteed that they will become Christians. Thus, transmission of the Christian faith, is the most challenging task of Christian communities. Only when this happens will the Christian communities have a future.

We are today in a state of social upheaval.

What is at stake is the inner cohesiveness of the Catholic Church and, indeed, of all Christian denominations. Europe’s Christian milieu has largely dissolved and has given way to a vague kind of believing fellowship. The great social framework has been secularized, no longer holding on to any particular Christian belief, but becoming liberalized and focused on the individual. Church authority is no longer considered to be subject to the critical judgment of believers. While the democratic-liberal state does not directly interfere with Church affairs, it does provide parameters for pluralistic thinking. The consequence of this is a steady loss of church membership, a mental alienation from church customs and regulations, an increasingly anti-church or ecclesiastically indifferent public and often frightening ignorance of the faith in the younger generations.^[7]

To live out the pastoral mission and ministry in a time of transition and crisis depends, to a great extent, on encouraging lively Christian communities, where the baptized Christians are receiving formation and where they are nurtured to carry out their mission in the Church and in the secular and plural society around them. “The millennium-old institution of the parish, as the most common Christian communities, has undergone various stages of crisis and transformation since the time of industrialization and urbanization, especially in the churches of the Western World” in an increasingly secular, individualistic and plural society, where religion is more and more restricted to the private sphere of life.^[8] But a crisis^[9] is not only a threat, but also a chance to renew and allow God’s Spirit to generate the church every day again, “a Church that each day ‘begets’ the Church herself”, as Pope John Paul II wrote in 1992 in Pastores Dabo Vobis, n. 57.This strongly underlines the pneumatological and historical aspect of all ecclesial activity and the need for Ekklesiogenesis in human history as an act of faith and a product of faith which creates life and community.

According to Vatican II the Spirit ‘permits the church to keep the freshness of her youth. Constantly he renews her’ (LG 4.1; cf. 9.3)

On the basis of his own encounter with very different social forms of church and Christian communities, the Austrian pastoral/practical theologian Franz Weber has written a credo that expresses his belief in the future viability and hope of the Church:

[1] Ibid, 11.

[2] Ibid., 16.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Evangelisierung und Globalisierung, Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, Bonn 2019. (Die deutschen Bischöfe – 106)

[5] Ibid., 45.

[6] Ibid., 6.

[7]Joachim Piepke, “Arnold Janssen – An Inspiration for today”. Verbum SVD 59:3 (2018) 307.

[8] Paul B. Steffen, “Nurturing Human and Christian Communities”, in Lazar, Thanuzraj Stanislaus, SVD/vanThanh Nguyen (eds.), SVD Missionary Discipleship in Glocal Contexts, Siegburg 2018, 318; cf. P. Steffen, “Practical Missiology or Practical Theology with Missionary Perspective? The Transformation of Missiology before and after Vatican II”. Ishvani Documentation and Mission Digest 35 (2017) 2, 146-160.

[9] Cf. David Bosch, Transforming Mission. Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001, 2-3.

Their main argument is:

The Covid-19 pandemic made the engagement for people, forced to leave their countries, even more important. Therefore, the joint statement argues:

How can the gospel of Jesus Christ be “translated” and understood linguistically and culturally in today’s context?
What are the challenges of globalization and secularization in today’s contexts?
How can the faith community of the church develop missionary perspectives and concretise options?

The German bishops point on/to the process of globalisation and pluralisation:

All those episcopal documents show that the bishops did not shy away from the task to convince the faithful of the work of evangelization in our secular context and time.

Concluding remarks

We are today in a state of social upheaval.

According to Vatican II the Spirit ‘permits the church to keep the freshness of her youth. Constantly he renews her’ (LG 4.1; cf. 9.3)

[1] Ibid, 11.

[2] Ibid., 16.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Evangelisierung und Globalisierung, Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, Bonn 2019. (Die deutschen Bischöfe – 106)

[5] Ibid., 45.

[6] Ibid., 6.

[7]Joachim Piepke, “Arnold Janssen – An Inspiration for today”. Verbum SVD 59:3 (2018) 307.

[9] Cf. David Bosch, Transforming Mission. Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001, 2-3.

Human and Christian life is first of all relational; Christian ministry is relational. The Christians and their church communities in Europe have to find new ways for such a relational life among people from different origins. They have to create new networks of relating to each other, so that the new citizens originating from Africa, Asia, Caribbean and America can contribute to building up evangelising church communities and a society being more just, which in turn will be then a blessing for Europe.

Paul Ricœur can encourage us to go ahead with hope and confidence:

If you want to change people’s conduct, you need to challenge their imagination.^[1]

Christianity in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Europe. Evangelisation and a new way of being church in a plural and secular context, in: Called to be a Blessing. Christian Mission as Becoming a Blessing Today, edited by Jose K. Guwahati, India 2023, 249-271.

[1] Paul Ricœur quoted by John M. Prior, Insights from Eco-Theology, in Lazar, Thanuzraj Stanislaus, SVD/vanThanh Nguyen (eds.), SVD Missionary Discipleship in Glocal Contexts, Siegburg 2018, 176; cf. Stephen Bevans and Katalina Tahaafe-Williams in Contextual Theologies for the Twenty-First Century, Eugene, OR 2011, 43.