Europe is dying. Many European historians expect it to be gone by around 2025. The CIA says by 2020. Eurabia is fast approaching, with Sharia law instead of democracy.
Mark Steyn, in "It's the Demography, Stupid," says, "...Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after a neutron bomb: The grand buildings will still be standing, but the people who built them will be gone."
What happened? Europeans (and most developed countries) had too few children for too long. It takes 2.1 children per woman for a generation merely to replace itself. But Steyn lists Western birthrates per woman as:
United States 2.07, Ireland 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76, Canada 1.5, Germany and Austria 1.3, Russia and Italy 1.2, Spain 1.1, adding:
"That's to say, Spain's population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria's by 36%, Estonia's by 52%."
Further, "We're pretty much awash in resources, but we're running out of people - the one truly indispensable resource, without which none of the others matter."
"Russia's the most obvious example: it's the largest country on earth, it's full of natural resources, and yet it's dying - its population is falling calamitously."
The developed world declined from 30% of global population in 1970 to 20% in 2000, while the Muslim world grew from 15% to 20%. Muslim birthrates were at least double Western birthrates.
Declining Europe has long had to import migrants to have enough workers, including at least 20 million Muslims. As Europe shrinks more, it will need still more immigrants. But Europe does not much try to assimilate them, and they do not much want to be assimilated. The Muslims tend to live in their own enclaves. There, in effect, they rule, they practice Sharia law, and they wait. They will be a majority before long. Then they will win control of Europe.
How did Europe start downward? Like the U.S, it was with the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Theirs was bigger and stronger than ours; more Marxist, more secular, more violent, more hedonistic and even more selfishly focused on "me" than here. In France, student rioters actually took over the nation for days. Their "progressive" agenda grew more powerful than here. Steyn says of the result that:
"The progressive agenda - lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism - is the real suicide bomb."
That lavish social welfare system, together with over-powerful unions, has resulted in unemployment rates above 10% and almost no economic growth. That keeps them from "spending their way out" of their economic and other problems.
The Sexual Revolution and the selfish focus on "me" resulted in children not being wanted. Children were viewed as getting in the way, deterring careers, limiting the freedom and pleasures of potential parents and costing too much. (Now, late, we are all learning what it costs not to have children!) So by abortion and other means, European "Boomers" chose to have few or no children.
Their multiculturalism - even more extreme than ours - has kept them from interacting realistically with their immigrant populations. Worse, many Europeans feel real snobbery toward non-Europeans. They find so many ways to keep immigrants out of the paths to advancement that almost no immigrants - not even of the second or third generations - are to be found in the upper reaches of government or business, especially in France.
European secularism - their disbelief in God - has left them without the inner resources to confront the religious zeal of the Muslims who are on the road to replacing them. Islam is the fastest-growing religion in Europe. There are now more mosques than churches, with more people in attendance.
What could save Europe? Only turning away from what is bringing them to extinction: the 1960s Cultural Revolution - with its Sexual Revolution's disdain for having children and its "me" focus on hedonism, its bloated welfare states and its secularism.
That would take changing hearts and minds, massively and in just a few years. Who could accomplish such a thing? Only Christ. But since Europeans look down on everything religious, re-introducing them to Christ would not be easy.
Still, we ought to hear the cry of Niall Ferguson, famed Brit historian now teaching at Harvard and an atheist. After the London subway bombings, Ferguson wrote in The Telegraph on 7-31-05 that somehow, England must be re-Christianized, in order to continue to exist. If such an illustrious, brilliant atheist can figure out that "No Christianity, No England," can't we see that too?
"No Europe" would mean many kinds of disaster for us, the rest of the West. and for democracy. As much as Europe antagonizes us, we need Europe. "No evangelism, No Europe" is grievously true. Europe may have only a 15-25 year window to turn back from the brink. We need to take up this evangelism challenge with real speed and focus, figure out how to get started, then go.
Europe is the most urgent new field for evangelism we have ever faced. We can ignore that only at our very great peril.
