A New Christendom

By PHILIP JENKINS

Europe is the Faith. -- Hilaire Belloc

The end of the 20th century was marked by an obsessive compilation of retrospective lists, which assessed the greatest moments and the most important individuals of the previous 100 years. Some observers, still more ambitious, tried to identify the high and low points of the whole millennium then passing. Yet in almost all those efforts, religious matters received remarkably short shrift. When religious individuals were highlighted, they were