A recent survey found that the majority of British and EU nationals want to preserve Europe’s Christian roots.
The research, conducted by Századvég Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Hungary, showed that 56% of Europeans from EU member states and the United Kingdom believes in safeguarding Europe’s Christian culture and traditions. According to the data from the 2022 Project Europe opinion poll, the largest proportion (65%) of Europeans who want to preserve Christian foundations came from former socialist countries while 54% from Western Europe expressed the same view.
Christian identity is still an important marker in Western Europe, even among those who rarely attend church. —Dr. Zoltán Kovács, Hungarian politician
It is interesting to note that more European adults prefer to retain their Christian heritage despite the growing secularization in many countries and progressive remarks of some church leaders. A 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center found that Christian identity remains an important distinction for adults in Western Europe, even those who rarely go to church.
“Christian identity is still an important marker in Western Europe, even among those who rarely attend church,” said Dr. Zoltán Kovács, a Hungarian historian and politician. He argued that while many veer off from traditional religious beliefs, it didn’t mean “that religion and the values it represents are no longer important to Europeans.” Religion remains “a social marker [that] continues to shape identity and form a religious culture that, regardless of the intensity of religious practice, shapes the majority of Europeans’ thinking,” he said.
The findings of the think tank prove that European Christians remain faithful to their roots, even if recently passed laws push for secularization and comments from faith leaders promote tolerance of sin.
In the article, Christian Roots, author Samuel McCarthy stressed that Europe was founded on Christianity. He wrote, “All the good that Europe has produced — from science and medicine to architecture and art, from the literature of Dante Alighieri and Miguel Cervantes to the literature of G.K. Chesterton and J.R.R. Tolkien, from the intellectually staggering advance in law to the exploration and explanation of the globe — has blossomed from its Christian roots.”
Michael Leahy, chairman of the conservative Irish Freedom Party, warned that, “Europe without Christianity ceases to be a coherent culture, and the term ‘Europe’ becomes a geographical, rather than a cultural expression, in that one could no more talk about ‘European values’ or ‘European culture’ than one could talk about the values and culture of the equator or of the Nile river.”
