Loss of Faith in Europe – Why Christianity Is Losing Its Significance
Why is Christianity losing its significance in Europe? From crises of faith and church scandals to esotericism: what are the causes of this loss of faith, and what does it mean for Europe's future?
For centuries, Europe was one of the most important centers of Christianity. Its cathedrals still shape its cities today, and Christian holidays determine the calendar. Yet the churches are losing their faithful. In France and the United Kingdom, for the first time in 2020, less than half of the population identified as Christian. Across Europe, the number of Christians fell by nine percent between 2010 and 2020, to around 505 million (Pew Research Center, How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020, 2025).
This development stands out all the more because the Catholic Church continues to grow worldwide. In October 2026, the Vatican news agency Fides reported that there are now more Catholics in Africa than in Europe (Fides, Die Statistiken der katholischen Kirche 2026).
How could the Christian faith lose so much significance, of all places, in Europe? The reasons range from personal crises of faith to prosperity to a loss of trust in the Church. At the same time, what people believe in today is changing. While some abandon religion altogether, others seek answers in esotericism or in worldviews that promise a better future.
The Causes of Europe's Loss of Faith
When Prayers Go Unanswered: Doubts About God
In a study by the Pew Research Center, a 29-year-old German woman spoke of a death in her family. At the time, she thought: “No, that's not how it is. That's not how it works.” After that, she said, she was done with faith (Pew Research Center, Being Christian in Western Europe, 2018).
Behind the woman's few words lies a painful experience. A loved one dies, or one's own child falls seriously ill. One prays, hopes for God's help, and ultimately has to accept that the longed-for rescue does not come. Why did God allow this? Did He even hear the prayer?
Job in the Old Testament wrestles with these same questions. He loses his possessions, his children, and finally his health (Job 1–2). His friends look for the cause in some hidden guilt. Job resists their accusations and demands to speak with God Himself: “But I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God” (Job 13:3). In the end, God rejects the friends' explanations (Job 42:7). Job still does not fully understand his misfortune. Yet even in his despair, he continues to speak with God and remains faithful to Him.
For someone who has come to know God above all as a protector, severe suffering can indeed shake their faith. The idea that God will shield the believer from every misfortune shatters in the face of illness or death. Yet at the heart of Christianity stands Christ Himself, who suffered innocently and died on the cross. The resurrection promises victory over death. Yet it spares the bereaved neither their grief nor the agonizing question of why.
Whether one holds on to God in the face of such experiences also depends on the image of Him one has formed over the course of one's life. A proclamation of faith that speaks only of God's help and leaves out the reality of suffering abandons the believer precisely when they need their faith most urgently.
Prosperity and the Illusion of Having Everything Under Control
Mangoes in January, strawberries in December, and a dinner that arrives at the front door just minutes after it's ordered: in Europe, a level of abundance has become taken for granted that earlier generations could only dream of. Food is judged by its origin, nutritional value, and quality. Saying a prayer before a meal, on the other hand, has long since ceased to be a matter of course.
The problem lies in how we handle prosperity. A full refrigerator can just as easily be an occasion for gratitude as a modest meal. But as soon as we regard everything as the result of our own achievement, it is easy to forget how much we have received.
Moses explicitly warned the people of Israel against this temptation. After entering the Promised Land, the Israelites would build houses, eat their fill, and increase their possessions. Then they might tell themselves: “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth” (Deut. 8:17).
Christ also tells of a rich man whose fields produce such a good harvest that he decides to build bigger barns. At last, he believes, he can rest and enjoy life. But God answers him: “You fool! This night your life will be demanded of you. Then who will own what you have prepared?” (Luke 12:20). The rich man has carefully planned his future. In doing so, he has forgotten his own death. He has enough provisions for many years, yet he cannot buy himself a single hour of life.
Paul sums up the Christian view of our possessions with a question: “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). Even our talents and the strength with which we work are not something we gave ourselves.
Prosperity, therefore, does not make faith superfluous. But it can foster the illusion that we have our lives completely under control. Where everything seems readily available, gratitude to God is also easily forgotten.
Science and progress: Is God becoming superfluous?
When Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution in 1859, he shook a notion that had long shaped European thought: that living beings had been directly created by God in their present form. Darwin explained the development of species through natural selection. In doing so, science offered an explanation for the diversity of life that did not require direct divine intervention.
The worldview changed in other areas as well. Diseases once interpreted as divine punishment could now be explained by pathogens. Thunderstorms and earthquakes lost their character as supposed signs of divine wrath. The natural sciences were able to describe more and more processes for which religious explanations had previously been used.
In the 19th century, thinkers such as Ludwig Feuerbach took up this scientific development. In his work The Essence of Christianity (1841), Feuerbach argued that God was a projection of human wishes and needs. Faith thus appeared to him as something humanity had produced itself. Such religiously critical ideas found fertile ground in an increasingly secular Europe.
Over the course of the 20th century, this way of thinking also shaped everyday life. For the treatment of an illness, people went to the doctor; for questions about the origin of the world, they turned to science. At the same time, the Church lost its former influence on education and public life. Especially where faith had mainly been conveyed as an explanation for misunderstood natural phenomena, God increasingly appeared superfluous.
In this way, scientific progress contributed to the loss of faith in Europe. The successes of research did not make atheism a necessary conclusion. However, they strengthened a worldview in which nature could be explained without recourse to God. For a growing part of the European population, religion thus became a personal conviction that one believed could be dispensed with in everyday life. The relationship between faith and reason was increasingly understood as a contradiction, even though Catholic theology has linked the two for centuries.
Church scandals and the loss of religious traditions
The abuse scandals have severely damaged the credibility of the Catholic Church. The MHG study, published in 2018, examined personnel files from German dioceses for the period from 1946 to 2014. It documented evidence of 3,677 minors affected by sexual abuse and 1,670 accused clergy. The researchers also pointed out that the actual numbers are likely higher (MHG Research Consortium, Sexual Abuse of Minors, 2018).
Behind these numbers are children and young people who were sexually abused by priests or other Church officials. In addition, there was the failure of those responsible, who protected the perpetrators or covered up their crimes.
Christ speaks of those who lead one of the little ones into sin: “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matthew 18:6). These words leave no room for downplaying such crimes.
For those affected and their families, the Church may thus have become a place they associate with fear and pain. Other believers lost trust in their priests or bishops. The failure of those responsible thus also struck at the proclamation of the Gospel.
How significant the consequences are for religious affiliation is shown by studies from the Pew Research Center. Among the Western Europeans surveyed who had abandoned their former religious affiliation, 53 percent cited scandals involving religious institutions or their leaders as an important reason, according to the regional median. In Spain, the figure was 74 percent (Pew Research Center, Being Christian in Western Europe, 2018).
In addition, doubts about faith and conflicts with Church teachings play a role. On questions such as abortion or sexual morality, the convictions of many Europeans differ markedly from Catholic teaching. The Pew study also shows that most formerly religiously affiliated respondents gradually distanced themselves from religion because of the Church's own statements.
The loss of faith is also evident within families. Parents still have their children baptized and sent to First Communion, even though they themselves have long since stopped attending Mass. For them, the sacraments remain part of family tradition. However, they often find it difficult to explain to their children what baptism means or why the Eucharist stands at the center of the Catholic faith.
As a result, religious upbringing is changing from generation to generation. Children now learn about the faith mainly in religious education classes or First Communion preparation. At home, they experience neither shared prayer nor regular attendance at Holy Mass. Once First Communion preparation is complete, any further contact with the Church is often lost. In this way, what remains of a family tradition gradually becomes merely a memory of something their grandparents once lived.
A Continent in Search of New Answers
Religious Unaffiliation: Growing Up Without God
In Europe, the Christian faith is losing ground above all among people who no longer wish to belong to any religion. Between 2010 and 2020, the number of religiously unaffiliated people rose by 37 percent to around 190 million. This means that one in four Europeans already identifies as having no religion (Pew Research Center, How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020, 2025).
For a large proportion of these people, religion simply no longer has any meaning. They do not attend church services, do not pray, and do not expect the Church to provide answers to their life questions. A 2018 study by the Pew Research Center found that the majority of religiously unaffiliated Western Europeans also reject belief in a higher power (Pew Research Center, Being Christian in Western Europe, 2018).
This represents a profound change compared to earlier generations. Belief in God was long a natural part of social life. Even people who rarely went to church knew themselves to belong to a Christian community. Today, children grow up in families where the question of God plays no role at all. For them, Christianity is at first simply one religion among many, which they know from school lessons or from history.
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In this way, the Church also loses access to people who have never consciously decided against the faith. They do not have to give up any Christian conviction, because they never adopted one from their parents in the first place. But neither do they possess any basic knowledge on which a deeper understanding could be built. As a result, the loss of faith continues from generation to generation.
Horoscopes, Witchcraft, and the New Fascination with Magic
Yet not all Europeans who distance themselves from Christianity also bid farewell to the supernatural. Some continue to believe in God but reject Christian revelation. Others place their trust in some vague higher power or speak of the universe fulfilling their wishes.
How widespread such notions are is also shown by a 2018 study from the Pew Research Center. In Germany, 28 percent of respondents believed in God as described in the Bible. By contrast, 38 percent professed belief in some other higher power or spiritual force. A further 26 percent rejected any such power (Pew Research Center, Being Christian in Western Europe, 2018).
What does it mean when people do not believe in the God of the Bible but nevertheless assume the existence of supernatural forces? Often what emerges is a faith whose content is shaped by personal needs. A higher power is expected to give strength, offer comfort, or grant wishes. Binding doctrines of faith and moral commandments are not needed for this.
This development is especially evident in esotericism. Horoscopes promise insight into the future, tarot cards are supposed to help with personal decisions. On social media, videos about witchcraft and magical rituals spread under the hashtag WitchTok. What was once regarded as superstition is now presented there as a way to influence one's own life through hidden powers.
Interest in such practices is measurable. In fifteen Western European countries studied, a median of 23 percent of respondents believed in 2018 that the stars influence human life. Twenty percent believed in reincarnation, and 34 percent in a predetermined fate (Pew Research Center, Being Christian in Western Europe, 2018).
Why do people trust a horoscope while considering Christian prayer ineffective? One possible reason lies in the different expectations involved. The Christian asks God for help while at the same time praying: “Thy will be done” (Matthew 6:10). He acknowledges that God's action remains beyond his own will. Magical practices, by contrast, promise to bring about a desired outcome through certain rituals—through one's own will alone, so to speak.
Sacred Scripture therefore explicitly condemns fortune-telling and sorcery (Deuteronomy 18:10–12). The Christian faith demands trust in a personal God. Magical notions, on the other hand, often turn supernatural powers into something man could use for his own purposes.
A remarkable consequence of Europe's loss of faith becomes apparent here: while belief in the Christian God declines, other supernatural notions persist. However, they replace Christianity only for part of the population. The majority of non-religious Europeans reject these beliefs as well.
Political Ideologies and Their Promises of Salvation
Religion shaped European life for centuries partly because it conveyed a binding understanding of man and his purpose. With the decline of Christianity, such religious standards are losing their former social influence. Yet the question of what human life should be oriented toward remains.
As early as the 19th century, Karl Marx combined his critique of religion with the hope for a fundamental transformation of society. He called religion the “opium of the people” (Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Introduction, 1844). Human misery was to be overcome by changing social conditions. The classless society became the goal of a historical liberation.
In Soviet communism, this developed into a comprehensive ideological claim. The Party determined which convictions could be publicly held. Religious communities were persecuted, while political leaders became objects of state-organized veneration. Lenin's embalmed body still lies today in a mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow.
The philosopher Eric Voegelin addressed such phenomena in 1938 in his work The Political Religions. He examined how political movements take up religious ideas and give their goals a significance that goes beyond ordinary political demands.
Even today, worldviews can make comprehensive claims to interpret the human person. Such conflicts become especially apparent in questions about human nature and identity. The Catholic Church understands man as a creature of God. According to Christian understanding, his dignity is grounded in the fact that he is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).
Certain modern theories proceed from different premises. Thus, in 1949, Simone de Beauvoir declared: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949; own translation). Later gender-theoretical approaches also called into question the idea of a naturally given gender identity. In doing so, they contradict Christian anthropology on essential points.
Such a contradiction alone does not make a theory a religion. What matters is whether a worldview, beyond that, claims to be able to fully explain man and bring about his ultimate liberation. This is precisely where the question of political substitute religions begins.
A distinction is important here regarding Europe's loss of faith: political ideologies have not simply replaced Christianity as a new majority religion. Rather, they show that, after the decline of church authority, other convictions can claim the right to determine, in a binding way, the image of man and the social order.
The Future of Christianity: Why Europe Is an Exception
The development in Europe appears especially striking when compared with other parts of the world. Between 2010 and 2020, the number of Christians in Europe fell by nine percent. During the same period, the Christian population in sub-Saharan Africa grew by 31 percent to around 697 million (Pew Research Center, How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020, 2025).
A significant part of this growth can be explained by the younger population and higher birth rates in African countries. Nevertheless, the comparison shows that the turning away from Christianity is not a development occurring in the same way everywhere.
That the centers of gravity of Christianity shift over time is part of its history. Augustine was Bishop of Hippo in what is now Algeria, where Christianity once flourished and later lost much of its former reach. Ethiopia already had a Christian Church in the fourth century, when large parts of Europe had not yet been Christianized.
For centuries, Europe sent missionaries to other continents. Today, priests from Africa and Asia come to Germany to serve in parishes here. In some respects, the direction of mission has thus been reversed.
For Europe, this raises a different question: how should the Christian faith be passed on in the future, when fewer and fewer children encounter it in their parental home? The Church cannot rely on people remaining Christian simply because of their origin. It increasingly encounters a population for whom even the basic statements of the Gospel have become foreign.
But this also raises a question for European society itself: Have we rejected the Christian faith after careful reflection? Or have we become so accustomed to a life without God that we no longer even ask ourselves this question?
Has Europe Forgotten God?
Friedrich Nietzsche told, in his The Gay Science, of a man who ran across the marketplace in broad daylight with a lantern, searching for God. The bystanders, who had long since ceased to believe in God, laughed at him. Then he cried out to them: “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!” (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 125).
The laughter is perhaps the most disturbing part of this story. The people already considered the question of God settled. Nietzsche, however, recognized that with the loss of faith, the previous foundations of European values would also begin to crumble.
And today? We have learned to treat diseases, to increase our prosperity, and to shape our lives as independently as possible. But what happens when our certainties fail? When a loved one dies, when we ourselves become guilty, or when the thought of our own death catches up with us? Then questions arise that neither a well-filled bank account nor scientific knowledge alone can answer.
The Church has destroyed a great deal of trust through its own failures. That cannot be glossed over. But the crimes of clergy decide no more about the truth of the Gospel than the mistakes of a doctor decide about the truth of medicine. Anyone who rejects Christianity should at least engage with what Christ actually taught.
He asked a question that also challenges an affluent Europe: “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36).
We have gained much. But have we lost something in the process whose value we only recognize once it is gone?
Europe lived and passed on faith in God for centuries. Today, many take it for granted that they can do without Him. But what if it is precisely this taken-for-grantedness that keeps us from even asking about Him at all?
About Lukasz Holfeld
Editor / author at Priesterausbildungshilfe.
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