Post-Post-Christian Europe?

I knew a girl in college who always called me David Netherlands.

Holland—the country whose name I bear, has for some time now been the poster child for European decadence, liberalism and post-Christian-ness—what with all the legal prostitution and hashish dens. And the conventional wisdom has long been that, once a culture goes "post-Christian" (to use C.S. Lewis' term) there is no way back. I've certainly been tempted to believe that.

So, imagine my delight to come across this article on the Weekly Standard web site.

It describes an astonishingly strong "movement" (we would call it a revival) of corporate prayer in Holland. Here's the opening paragraph:

When the "corporate prayer" movement first started in 1996, few people in Holland took any notice. Why should they have done so? After all, Holland's manifest destiny was to become a fully secularized country, in which prayer was considered at best an irrational but harmless pastime. That was then. Cue forward to 2006, when prayer in the workplace is fast becoming a universally accepted phenomenon. More than 100 companies participate. Government ministries, universities, multinational companies like Philips, KLM, and ABN AMRO--all allow groups of employees to organize regular prayer meetings at their premises. Trade unions have even started lobbying the government for recognition of workers' right to prayer in the workplace.

As you may know, Holland|Simpson has been involved for some time with ministries working to bring about a spiritual renaissance in spiritually-dark Europe.

How gratifying it is then to see this flicker of light.