Then at some point in the last decade the winds of opinion began gently at first to blow in the contrary direction. They began to affirm what renegades and dissidents suggested in the post-war decades and admit, grudgingly, that Western liberal societies may in fact owe something to the religion from which they arose. This admission was not made because the evidence changed: that evidence was there all along. What changed was a growing awareness that other cultures now increasingly among us did not share all of our passions, prejudices or presumptions. The attempt to pretend that what has been believed and practised in modern Europe is normal has taken repeated blows. Across some rather surprising learning moments – a terrorist attack here, an ‘honour’ killing there, a few cartoons somewhere else – the awareness grew that not everybody who had come to our societies shared our views. They did not share our views about equality between the sexes. They did not share our views on the primacy of reason over revelation. And they did not share our views on freedom and liberty. To put it another way, the unusual European settlement, drawn up from ancient Greece and Rome, catalysed by the Christian religion and refined through the fire of the Enlightenments, turned out to be a highly particular inheritance.

While many Western Europeans spent years resisting this truth or its implications, the realisation came anyway. And although some people still hold out, in most places it has become possible to acknowledge that the culture of human rights, for instance, owes more to the creed preached by Jesus of Nazareth than it does, say, to that of Mohammed. One result of this discovery has been a desire to become better acquainted with our own traditions. But whilst opening up a question, it does not solve it. For the question of whether this societal position is sustainable without reference to the beliefs that gave birth to it remains deeply relevant and troubling to Europe. Just because you are part of a tradition does not mean you will believe what those who originated that tradition believed even if you like and admire its results. People cannot force themselves into sincere belief, and that is perhaps why we do not ask these deeper questions. Not only because we do not believe the answers we used to give in reply to them, but because we sense that we are in some way in an interim period of our development and that our answers may be about to change. After all, how long can a society survive once it has unmoored itself from its founding source and drive? Perhaps we are in the process of finding out.