The Myth of a Christian Revival in Eastern Europe

The American Conservative ^ | Jan 2019 | Will Collins

[CondoleezzaProtege]

It takes a village to get a 50-foot Christmas tree into a Hungarian school’s common area...The school where I teach is a public institution, but its enthusiastic observance of the Christmas season would put many American parochial academies to shame. From Christmas markets to school pageants, Hungarians celebrate the holiday with a verve that is both charming and somewhat disorienting to an American accustomed to our secular public square. In this corner of Eastern Europe, the War on Christmas is over, and Christmas has decisively won.

What Christmas markets and colorful lights can’t hide, however, is the underlying weakness of Hungarian Christianity...

From Orbán’s rhetoric to the recently revised constitution’s proud affirmation of Hungary’s “Christian culture,” the political climate in Budapest suggests near-medieval levels of piety. Just as American politicians only began referring to the United States’ Judeo-Christian heritage after the onset of secularism, these public pronouncements are best understood as a sign that all is not well within Hungary’s historic churches.

Although a majority of Hungarians identify as Catholic, only 12 percent regularly attend church. Less than 15 percent of Hungarians say religion is “very important” in their lives. Christmas markets, generous public subsidies to religious schools, and beautifully preserved churches have done little to arrest this steady decline.

The combination of public enthusiasm for Christian symbolism and declining religious participation is not unique to Hungary. Despite the fall of communism, church attendance throughout Eastern Europe has dropped significantly since 1990.

Regional and national variations aside, the trend line is clear: institutional Christianity is in decline, even as religious symbolism and the rhetoric of Christian identity have experienced a post-communist revival...

[CondoleezzaProtege]

This is a far better problem to have than total eradication of Christianity from public sphere, as is happening here in the states.

[PGR88]

Christian thought, morality, culture and social discourse are woven through our society so deeply, that even 99% of American leftists don’t realize it.

They act like children who have inherited a grand estate, yet want to tear down the centuries-old manor, having nothing to replace it with, are surprised when the roof leaks and the heat doesn’t work and everyone they’ve invited to live there are at each other’s throats.

At least the Eastern Europeans aren’t actively tearing down their manor.

[tbw2]

The country of Georgia shows how religious cultural revivals CAN reverse the below replacement rate birth rate and rebuild the family.
The patriarch of their Eastern Orthodox church said he would personally baptize every third or later child of families, becoming their godfather.
This is thought to be THE driving factor in a rise in third and later births in the country getting them back up to 2.0 children per woman ... after falling to nearly half that.
AND they did it while the single mother birth rate dropped. You don’t have to subsidize irresponsible sexuality to get birth rates up.
It requires a conservative religious cultural revival, but it can be done.

[BobL]

“This is a far better problem to have than total eradication of Christianity from public sphere, as is happening here in the states.”

Agree, and also far better to have light church attendance (as in Hungary) than to have light church attendance couple with the importation of millions of Muslims (as in Western Europe).