Africa has galloping population growth, while birth rates in the United States, Europe and East Asia are below replacement levels. The numbers don’t tell the whole story — there’s also a qualitative difference between the faith in Africa and its character in the United States and Europe. Belloc could write “Europe is the faith” because outside Europe, Christianity met with bitter and often bloody and conclusive setbacks. Europe and the United States have likewise fostered an environment in which Christianity flourishes, on a global scale. The West is not the faith — but it is the moral battleground on which the future of the faith on several continents depends.
