A new study has come out which finds that the majority of European Christians do not believe in God, Heaven, or Hell:
A global survey of people’s perceptions of major religious beliefs has found that in a number of Western nations a majority of the population no longer believes in Heaven or Hell, even if they profess a belief in God.
A global survey on the perception of people around the world has found that in a number of Western countries, relatively small portions of the population believe in Heaven and Hell, though more believe in God.
“Some countries significantly overestimate belief in Heaven: Japan guessed that 42 percent of people believe in Heaven when the actual figure is just 19 percent. In South Africa, the pattern is the opposite; their average guess is that 67 percent believe in Heaven, but actual survey results show belief in Heaven is 84 percent,” reported Ipsos’ “Perils of Perception” survey, which was published on Wednesday.
“Guesses on how many people believe in Hell follow a similar pattern of big errors in both directions. For example, people in Spain think that 43 percent of Spaniards believe in Hell, when actually only 19 percent say they do.
Belief in God was also split. For example, Swedes think nearly twice as many people believe in God than actually report they do (37 percent versus 22 percent).”
The findings are based on 29,133 interviews conducted in 38 countries worldwide between Sept. 28–Oct. 19.
One major trend among the countries profiled, when looking at Western nations, is that the perception is that more people believe in Heaven and Hell than actually do.
Only a minority of the population in Germany, Norway, Australia, Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, France, Spain, Japan and Belgium said that they believe in Heaven and Hell, though in almost every case people assumed that greater propitons hold such beliefs.
The narrative was more divided when it comes to perceptions of how many people believe in God. As a whole, greater numbers said that they have faith in God than those who said they believe in Heaven and Hell.
A majority of people in the United States said that they believe in God, Heaven and Hell, though again belief in God was greater than the latter two.
The trend was noticed by Graham Nichols, the director of Affinity, a network of Christian organisations, who told Premier: “It’s difficult to reconcile some of them. Quite a large proportion identify as Christians and yet quite a small proportion believe in Heaven and Hell, so you wonder what those who identify as Christian actually believe.”
Nicholas added: “In terms of the Christian message, it’s important that people believe in both. They’re both things that Jesus talked about a lot. Part of what He spoke about was both Heaven and Hell — Hell to be avoided and Heaven to be entered into.”
The Ipsos survey did not provide statistics on specific religions, though a decline in Christianity has been documented in a number of Western countries, including the U.K.
A ComRes survey in September found that as little as 6 percent of British adults are practicing Christians, as defined by those who read the Bible, pray, and attend church on a regular basis.
The poll, conducted in March, found that as many as 51 percent of adults self-identified as Christians, but many did not match up to the before-mentioned criteria of practicing believers. (source)
The fact that Western Europe is practically dead in terms of religous faith is not a surprise at all, as anybody who as visited or spoken with many Europeans will immediately notice the lack of any religious sentiment among the people and, if one visits Europe, will see that practically all churches are museums, with the majority of people there being tourists except for the few elderly persons who are near to death yet still attend, as it is likely they are the only persons left who believe. Yet if one reads the published numbers, one would not think this is the case because a large number of persons call themselves Christians.
Excluding Japan, the least “Christian” country by percentage of the population in Western Europe is Holland at 34% (the Czech Republic in Eastern Europe is likewise tied at 34%, but this pertains to Eastern Europe). France is next at 55%, then Great Britain at 59%. Sweden comes in at 65%, Norway at 77%, and Denmark at 79%. All of these nations, while heavily influenced by Protestantism, all have “state churches” in addition to other Christian sects.
Therefore, if so many people identify as Christians, it is a major problem that the clear majority of people who claim to be Christians do not believe in even the smallest of fundamental beliefs that define what it means to be a Christian. Indeed, it does not make sense for so many people to call themselves Christians if they do not believe what Christianity teaches, unless there is another factor at work here.
In October 2017, we reported on a story from the UK that Christian parents banded together to attack the Christian school where they were sending their children because they were angry over the fact that they were being taught that Heaven and Hell are real. As we noted, at the same time it was reported by other news sources that countless numbers of British people were traveling to Serbia in order to have sex with animals, and yet there was no outcry from anybody about this:
A Christian group is defending itself against allegations that it’s teaching students “extremist” views after being banned from a church-run primary school following complaints by parents who said their children were being “exposed to potentially damaging ideology.”
“Wherever possible we work in partnership with local churches and we reflect their teaching, always aiming to be sensitive to the local context, and recognizing that churches vary. We teach mainstream Christianity,” Wayne Harris, national director of Christian charity Crossteach, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“In 16 years of Christian schools work no teacher has ever raised a concern that something has been said that could be interpreted as in any way ‘hateful’ or ‘extremist’ and we strongly refute this current parental allegation. On the contrary, schools have consistently expressed appreciation for the contribution that Crossteach has made and for the quality of the work,” Harris added.
As The Telegraph reported, Dan Turvey, headmaster of St John’s Church of England Primary School in Tunbridge Wells, said he had listened to parents’ concerns and decided to no longer invite the group to lead assemblies or take lessons.
Some parents apparently complained that their children were being taught about sin, and were told that if they don’t believe in God, “they would not go to a good place when they died.”
Another parent who wasn’t named said, “I do know some of the children have been upset by what they have heard. No one minds Nativity plays and Bible stories but considering most of the parents at the school aren’t practicing Christians, I think the feeling is that it’s all too much.” (source, source)
As we pointed out, the reason why this terrible juxtaposition existed was because in the UK, for a man to state that he is a Christian means that he has assumed and believes in a certain set of morals and values that designate him as a “good British citizen,” and have nothing to do with actual faith:
The reason these parents are protesting the school is, as the article note and as reflected by the majority of much of American and European society, they do no believe in Christ or even in God at all. They want the ideas and values of Christianity in their children, but they refuse to accept the divinely revealed foundation through which these beliefs were established as moral absolutes for all time. They desire a Christianity without a cross, and salvation without a savior, and rejection of the ways of the world without having to reject worldliness. (source)
This is the situation with much of Western Europe today, for to be a Christian is synonymous with a particular form of nationalism divorced or divorceable from religious faith. In such a case and whether the person fully understands what they adhere to or not, the fact is that religious faith is but second to nationalism and nationalist ends. This is not a problem when nationalist goals accord with the Christian faith, but immediately becomes a problem when nationalist goals do not align with Christian teachings. The latter is far more common than the former, as much of the struggles between the Church and the world after heresy is against ideas from tyrannical governments who want to take control over the Church in order that they would make it into a mouthpiece to enforce on a social level the laws or values which the rulers want to impose upon the ruled.
Such a desire for power to attempt to use the Church for political ends was a major reason for the Investiture Controversy of the Middle Ages, the Protestant Revolution, the French Revolution, and many other horrible conflicts. The reason for the division of the estates in a society and the continual attempts at the destruction by or subjection of the Church to the government is intended to eliminate the bond that unifies as well as separates the rulers from the ruled, for once such a buffer is destroyed or rendered ineffective, the struggle for power no longer has any regulating mechanism, and it becomes a winner-take-all scenario in which victory goes to the most aggressive and brutal contender who imposes and defines morality by force as measured by the inclinations of his own will, effectively rendering him the arbiter and standard by which right and wrong is defined. It is ultimately a struggle to answer the question of who speaks of behalf of God’s authority and in an advanced enough form, if God speaks to men as the all powerful deity, or if a man can become a deity by concentrating his power. The latter is clearly false, but it is merely a reflection of the sin of the garden of Eden repeating itself again.
This is the reason why there are so many apparent “Christians” in the nationalists movement in Europe, even though many of these people are supporting nationalist positions that either go against or are in danger of opposing Christianity, because they are not Christians. They are pagans in the absolute sense of the word, whose god is defined by the worship of their people, land, and culture but without the worship of the God who made them. This applies to the people who claim to be Christians- this does not apply to those Europeans who admit they are secular or outright pagans. To the credit of the pagans, they are more honest because they simply profess openly the same beliefs which many of such ‘Christians’ already have since their Christianity is defined in terms of paganism.
Christ did not come to establish a social club or other venue through which to communicate “values” or “ideas.” Christ came to destroy the works of darkness and free man from the bondage that he placed himself into through Original Sin. He came to destroy evil, and to be a Christian and follow in the way of perfect love, which is equally perfect mercy and perfect justice, is to take up arms against the ways and practices of the world that are against God and which lead men to perdition. It is to be an active participant in the fight against evil because having been poisoned by sin, to follow in the way of perfection is to be at war against sin and all of its effects.
The very idea that Christianity is somehow a vehicle for preserving nationalism, values, or ideas apart from Christ and the work He completed on the cross is a blasphemous monstrosity because it suggests that Christ died for nationalism, as though salvation is bound to a particular nation or people, time or place. Christ died for all men that whose who would enter into the Tribe of Israel, which is the Church through Faith is the way by which a man embarks on the path to salvation. It is a choice that is made by grace.
Anything less is just a heathen mockery of divinely revealed truth.