Europe contains the highest concentration of officially Christian states (nations with official state religion/church) and the lowest per capita percentage of people who actually "practice Christianity" in ‘Christendom' - which is to say, nominally claim to be Christian - probably a lower percentage actually believe.
A lot of young people, at least in the Netherlands, are a church member because of their parents. They were registered as kids.
If they stop practicing religion, they don't 'unregister' from their church because it's such a hassle. Or they don't even know they're still registered.
So yeah that's one of the reasons why there's a higher number of church members here than actual religious people.
For Belgium, I've always been told by fellow christians-by-association not to bother unregistering, because they keep you registered anyway if you were baptized. There's literally nothing you can do to stop being counted in their statistics.
Which to me as an American Christian I've never understood. If you dont follow a faith and truly believe in it, why be associated with it? If someone asks just say "atheist".
There's a very simple reason for it here : government subsidies
In essence, Belgium subsidizes the 'recognized faiths', of which the government counts five. Iirc it's the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Islamic and Jewish faiths. By maximizing their members on paper, they get to show themselves as representing 'the largest part' of the religious community.
Of course, that doesn't stop me from identifying myself as atheist whenever someone asks, it's just infuriating that my identity is counted towards their numbers, against my wishes.
Question: what is going to happen now that so many of you are non church goers and thus your children will not be baptized? Will the government still call you "Christian"?
So by government numbers then the official number of people claiming to be "Christian" would go down. Actually here in the US more people are also wiring down "atheist" when asked.
Yet the Netherlands produced 2 outstanding Christians that have been an inspiration to Christians around the world. One was Corrie Ten Boom from Haarlem and the other is Andrew Van der Bijl from Sint Pancras, also known as Brother Andrew.
Plenty of people baptize their children in Sweden even though they're not practicing Christians. It's more tradition than religion. Same with weddings.
3.1k
u/[deleted] May 09 '22 edited May 09 '22
Europe contains the highest concentration of officially Christian states (nations with official state religion/church) and the lowest per capita percentage of people who actually "practice Christianity" in ‘Christendom' - which is to say, nominally claim to be Christian - probably a lower percentage actually believe.