In Depth:  Europe

Luke Randall

Member states of the European Union (EU) must recognise legal unions established in other EU countries, even if such unions are not legal within other member states, following a court ruling.

The ruling was given by the EU’s Court of Justice (CJEU), which ruled that the same-sex marriage of two men must be officially recognised in Poland, where same-sex marriage is illegal: they had been refused recognition after moving there, having been married in Germany.

Luke Randall

Evangelicalism is on the rise in Spain, with the number of evangelical places of worship having increased by 96 over the last year, according to newly released statistics.

New data on worship places released by the Observatory of Religious Pluralism in Spain, reveals that evangelical Christianity has more places of worship than any other minority faith group, with 4,455, up from 4,359 in 2023.

Milla Ling-Davies

A survey shows that Europeans born after 1997 are more spiritual than their elders.

The Global Religion 2023 survey, conducted by market research service Ipsos, interviewed 19,000 people in 26 countries. It has revealed that ‘in countries where religious practice is high, older adults tend to engage in it more than the young, while in countries where religious practice is low, young people tend to have higher engagement.’

Iain Taylor

In times of secularisation and confusion, the church needs to recover its integrity and a desire to proclaim the gospel boldly. These were the main messages heard at the 2023 European Leadership Forum (ELF) conference, in Wisla, Poland, recently.

‘Gospel integrity is a major need for the church now’, theologian Michael Reeves (England) told the 750 participants on the first evening. ‘The moral deficiencies and spiritual dryness that Christians bemoan, have roots’, he said. ‘We are astonished when evangelical leaders fail’, but this only shows that often evangelical leaders ‘minimise sin and offer shallow repentance’.

More than 600 church workers from 41 countries and four continents have attended the European Leadership Forum (ELF).

The mission of ELF, which was held in Wisla, Poland, is to ‘unite, equip and resource evangelical leaders to renew the Biblical church and evangelise Europe’. Their desire is for different evangelical groups to work together to achieve more than any single organisation can on their own.

Iain Taylor

Covid-19 is an opportunity for European mission agencies to reflect deeply once again on the meaning of mission in today’s world.

One of the key questions it raises is whether it has made sense to have invested so heavily in huge buildings, since social distancing restrictions have forced many churches to think about how to make small gatherings work, not just big ones.