The Church in France is on fire. . .

With Pentecost in our rear view mirror, it might be understandable if you think that this is about renewal in the moribund state of Christianity in France.  If only that were true.  In fact, it is the other way around.  The churches in France are burning down.  It may have begun with Notre Dame but that public spectacle was only the most visible fire burning among Christians in France.  It was followed by another fire.  The 16th-century Church of Saint-Pierre in Romilly-la-Puthenaye, Normandy, northern France, was consumed by fire about 2 years to the day after the famed Paris cathedral.

According to one commentator, one religious building disappearing in France every two weeks — by demolition, transformation, destruction by fire, or collapse — two-thirds of fires in religious buildings are due to arson. Edouard de Lamaze said “Although Catholic monuments are still ahead, one mosque is erected every 15 days in France, while one Christian building is destroyed at the same pace.  It creates a tipping point on the territory that should be taken into account.” 

Of course, the problem is not simply the loss of historically significant architecture.  The buildings are a treasure to the French culture but they are a powerful symbol of the implosion of Christianity in what was once considered the “eldest daughter of the Church” because the Frankish King Clovis I embraced Catholicism in 496.  It was not been slow in coming but the decline has hastened lately.  Few Roman Catholics go to mass and few consider the faith a part of their daily lives.  Though Lamaze is concerned about the nation's culture, the real concern ought to be their soul.

Islam has just the opposite history.  It is on the ascent in a nation in which cultural division is hard to mask.  Immigrants and asylum seekers as well as the French speaking populace who ethnic heritage is not French are not integrated into the society but live on the fringes, some in their own religious and cultural ghettos.  But they are growing as Christianity declines.  We have seen it in the headlines.  Now we are seeing its effect as buildings that once testified to the vitality of the Christian faith in France are empty, decaying, and burning down.  While the hope is that people will care about the historic structures, the greater hope is that the leaders of French churches and the people will awaken to to need to repent and return to the faith.  If they don't, France's legacy may be Christian and its historic structures once churches but its future a mosque.  The rest of Europe may not be far behind.