The Paradox of European Secularism

Bad news from the church front in Germany over the weekend: half of the Evangelish (Lutheran) Churches in Germany will no longer be needed:

Bielefeld (AP) Fast die Hälfte der bundesweit mehr als 20.000
evangelischen Kirchen und Kapellen werden künftig nicht mehr für
Gottesdienste benötigt. In den neuen Ländern werden langfristig sogar
weit mehr 50 Prozent der Gotteshäuser überflüssig, wie der bei der
Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (EKD) für Bau- und Grundstücksrecht
zuständige Oberkirchenrat Gerhard Eibach dem Bielefelder
«Westfalenblatt» sagte.

The situation for the Catholic Church in Germany is similarly bleak: according to the FTD the church loses 20 members each hour.  This progressive secularization of Germany – and Europe in general – does not please the neocons in Washington.  The neocon writer Francis Fukuyama has an interesting essay in the New York Times Book Review on the 100th anniversary of Max Weber’s  The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.  Towards the end of the essay Fukuyama resorts to the common neocon ploy of attacking "godless" Europe:

SURPRISINGLY, the Weberian vision of a modernity characterized by
”specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart” applies much
more to modern Europe than to present-day America. Europe today is a
continent that is peaceful, prosperous, rationally administered by the
European Union and thoroughly secular. Europeans may continue to use
terms like ”human rights” and ”human dignity,” which are rooted in
the Christian values of their civilization, but few of them could give
a coherent account of why they continue to believe in such things. The
ghost of dead religious beliefs haunts Europe much more than it does
America.

Of course, Fukuyama is being deliberately stupid in equating "human rights" and "human dignity" with Christian values.  These are expressions of secular humanism. All charters which recognize liberty of conscience
and equality of individuals, without discrimination based on sex, race or religion, are expressions of the quintessence of
secularism. It is the "Christian" faith-based leadership in the United States that sanctions the killing of prisoners under the death penalty, the torture of detainees, and the sanctity of preemptive war. 

That is the paradox of European secularism today: it is more "Christian" in practice than its fundamentalist counterpart in Washington.