CANTERBURY, England -- For more than nine centuries, pilgrims wended their way in multitudes to the majestic cathedral in this ancient town, trekking from all over Europe, as Geoffrey Chaucer put it in the first great book printed in English, "the holy blisful martir for to seke."
But the faith that drove those pilgrims is severely diminished today. At Morning Prayer last Sunday, the great vaulted ceiling of Canterbury Cathedral looked down upon a grand total of 13 worshipers. A midday communion service did better, with about 300 people on hand, counting the choirboys in their white ruffled collars and a phalanx of tourists with video cameras. But that still left 80 percent of the seats unused.
Canterbury, mother church of the global Anglican/Episcopalian faith, is hardly the only European church that is largely empty most Sundays. Western Europe, home of the world's biggest religious denomination, the Roman Catholic Church, and the birthplace of most major Protestant faiths, has largely turned its back on religion.
It now has "one of the least religious populations in the world," noted the Dutch sociologist Nan Kirk de Graaf.
In Britain and France, less than 10 percent of the population attends church as often as once a month. In Scandinavia, the handsome high-steepled churches that mark every city and village attract less than 3 percent of the people. In Amsterdam, the Dutch Reformed hierarchy is converting churches into luxury apartments to pay its bills.
"It's a secular age," sighs Canon Michael Chandler, vice dean of the cathedral here. "We're breeding a whole generation without much spiritual perception."
At the same time that Christianity is waning in Europe, it is being observed by more people in Europe's former colonies in Africa and Latin America. There were an estimated 106 million Roman Catholics in Africa in 1988 and 117 million a decade later. The number of Catholics in Latin America grew from 378 million in 1988 to 454 million in 1999.
While the pews tend to be empty in Europe's Christian houses of worship, other religions seem to be healthy. Hindu and Muslim denominations, brought to Europe by a wave of immigration, are expanding rapidly, so much so that this year's British census has added a question, previously unnecessary, about "religious affiliation." The continent's Jewish population is holding steady. But in most of Europe, non-Christians represent only a tiny share of the population.
And while the great mass of European Christians have been turning away from Sunday services, there are signs that some have maintained a modicum of faith outside organized religion. The number of people who say they believe in God is considerably higher than the number of people who go to church with some regularity.
In one sense, Europe's loss of religious faith poses a striking contrast to the situation in the United States. Depending on how the question is asked, up to 95 percent of Americans say they believe in God; in much of Western Europe, the figure is closer to 50 percent.
The public religiosity that is part and parcel of American life is rarely seen here; the only televangelists on European screens are piped in via cable from Newport News, Va., and Houston.
Europeans tend to be surprised, or amused, when U.S. politicians end a speech with the words "God bless America."
"When they hear that, the intellectuals break out in a little smug smile," says Jonathan Freedland, a columnist with London's Guardian newspaper. "It's almost impossible to imagine a prime minister saying 'God bless Britain' or 'God bless Sweden.' "
Does this difference in faith make a difference in life? It is hard to argue that Europe is a less moral or caring society than the churchgoing United States. Americans put up huge billboards reading "Love Thy Neighbor," but they murder and rape their neighbors at rates that would shock Europeans.
Corruption in business and government seems to occur at similar rates on both sides of the Atlantic.
Norwegians don't go to church much, but their government gives aid to poor countries at a per capita rate that is 10 times that of the U.S. government. Indeed, every West European government devotes a considerably higher share of its budget to foreign aid than the United States does.
Some people here warn, though, that the current decline in formal religion -- which scholars say can be traced back to the 1960s -- could eventually undermine the shared basis of public morality. "In terms of moral guidance, we are living on the strength of a legacy," says Chandler, the Canterbury canon. "And it may run out."
An alternative view holds that Europeans now draw their norms for moral behavior from humanism, from reason rather than religious commandments.
"Morality still hinges very much on the Christian rules, but in Denmark today you cannot say that the norm is the norm and must be obeyed," noted Danish sociologist Jorgen Goul Andersen of Aalborg University. "You say the norm is the norm because it is reasonable."
Nowadays, public codes of conduct, such as the European Convention on Human Rights, a continental bill of rights, tend to come not from holy scripture but from reports by blue-ribbon committees.
Another common explanation for the empty churches is that in wealthy Western Europe, modern life is easy and comfortable. "People can go through much of a life without facing the big issues," said Chandler. "You can get to age 50 or higher without ever facing the death of somebody close to you."
Chandler noted that traditional religious rites such as baptism, confirmation and marriage have had sharp drops in participation. But all over Europe, families go back to the church when it comes time to bury a loved one.
On the continent that spawned the Industrial Revolution, quantum physics and modern genetics, the rise of science is also cited in explaining the fall of faith. "Science can explain a lot of things," said de Graaf, the Dutch scholar. "Because of that, people lose faith. They become unbelievers and leave the church. . . . The more the parents read, the more likely it is that the child will leave the church."
Despite their agnosticism, Europeans tolerate much closer relations between church and state than the United States has ever had. That's the legacy of two millennia of mutual dependence between temporal and spiritual leaders -- a relationship with which the U.S. Founding Fathers decidedly parted ways.
There are still voting seats in the upper house of Britain's Parliament reserved for Anglican clergy. Many countries have an official tax to support religious organizations, and countries that don't have one find other ways to finance faith. When Sweden decided last year that Lutheranism would no longer be the official state religion, the government agreed to retain the line on the income tax form that designates part of the money for churches. Church leaders say they hope people will ignore the notice that says this portion of the tax is now optional.
Thousands of public schools -- that is, state-financed schools with open enrollment -- are run by churches. Nuns in habits teach in the public schools of Switzerland.
Not surprisingly, these church-run institutions routinely include religious teachings in the curriculum, with little complaint from parents. In Britain, in fact, every school -- public, private or parochial -- is required to provide religious education, although students routinely rate these classes as their least favorite.
Part of the justification for religious education -- a term that means, in most of Europe, education about Christianity -- is the inseparable connection between Christian faith and the European tradition. "You cannot understand Western art, literature or architecture without knowledge of the Christian religion," noted Jean-Francois Mayer, a lecturer in religion at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.
Guides at London's National Gallery of Art complain that student groups viewing the gallery's European treasures often lack the basic cultural background needed to appreciate what they see. Schoolchildren no longer know what the label "INRI" stands for in the great crucifixion paintings (it's the Latin abbreviation for "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews"). They don't recognize the saint who is depicted with birds and forest animals (Francis of Assisi).
But if Europeans remain willing to pay taxes for organized religion, they are less and less interested in taking part. "The statistics of decline are familiar," wrote John V. Taylor, an Anglican bishop. "Falling church membership, fewer marriages of any sort, chronic shortages of clergy and religiously illiterate children."
Considering that the power of religious conviction spawned bloody wars, inspired timeless works of art and spurred thousands of people to spend decades erecting mighty cathedrals like Canterbury's, it is surprising how little of that fervor lingers in modern Europe.
"For us, this is just the history lesson," said Yves Evereux, a high school student from Normandy, France, who came to Canterbury on a class field trip. "I don't go to church, not ever. My parents, not either." The most exciting thing about the cathedral, he said, was the murder that took place here in 1170, when St. Thomas a Becket -- the "blisful martir" of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" -- fell victim to a long-running battle between clergy and monarchy.
Churches have sought to accommodate this kind of thinking by tolerating greater skepticism among believers and clergy alike. Until 1980, the Church of England required new priests to swear that they "unfeignedly believe all the canonical scriptures of the Old and New Testament." Today, potential clerics need swear only that they "accept the holy scriptures as revealing all things necessary for eternal salvation through faith."
And more and more Europeans tend to act out what faith they have outside the official structure. They pray at home, or in the car during the morning commute. They flock to carol services at Christmas and buy CDs of religious music (the unlikely boom in chart-topping recordings of Gregorian chant began here and then spread to the United States). They travel to places like Vatican City or Lourdesfor personal moments of religious rapture.
However bad the numbers seem for formal worship, many members of the church hierarchy remain optimistic. Formal observance does "tend to wax and wane, you know," says Canon Chandler, standing beside a huge cathedral door that has accepted worshipers for a thousand years. "The British census of 1851 showed that half the population didn't go to church. We're somewhat below that now, but we can definitely come back, as we have before."