"Europe is the faith and the faith is Europe." David Engels, a Belgian historian of the Roman and other ancient empires, agrees with only the first part of this controversial statement of Hilaire Belloc. As Engels points out, there are many ancient Christian communities outside Europe, still flourishing, if often persecuted, today.
However, he insists that, indeed, like Belloc, the Christian faith lies at the heart of Europe and that without this faith it is likely to dissolve.
He also insists on the peculiar character of specifically Western European Christianity. Besides a concern with the unique significance and destiny of every human creature, shared with all Christian cultures, it has exhibited from the outset what Engels, following Oswald Spengler, describes as a "Faustian" bent: a desire to "go further" in either vertical or horizontal dimensions, and in either a spiritual or a material register.
