Europe's Christian roots

"Europe sits atop a Christian base," the historian Élie Barnavi, Israel's former ambassador to France, asserts in an interview led by Elizabeth Lévy. "The substrata, the true infrastructure of nations, are a common culture, a common language and shared adversity. We will not escape history by denying it. The result we see is that Europe is clearly an economic reality, maybe a political project, for some people an ideological choice - but it is not a cultural entity, something carnal. This is not a Europe we feel like getting into bed with. (...) To say that Europe has Christian roots does not mean it must remain Christian until the end of time. But the base must be strong in order to absorb the shock from added items. Enlargement was carried out under the moral and political pressure of the new arrivals before consolidation had been completed."

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