In the second installment of a three-part series on the place of religion in Europe, Peter Ford of The Christian Science Monitor finds “waves of spirituality” in the “secular ocean” that is the continent of Europe. Among these new wave-makers, Ford notes some violent, “noisy” types: radical Muslims who bombed the trains in Madrid and murdered Theo van Gogh, and the “angry mob” of brick-throwing Sikhs who forced the closure of a British play last December. But that’s not to worry anyone that the rise of religion is potentially divisive; Ford’s also found “signs of a quieter and less divisive return of religion and spirituality to European lives”: charmismatic Christian movements in the American tradition, a surge in religion-related publishing, and increased interest in Buddhist meditation.

Sound like a familiar divide? Dangerous fanatics and peaceable, self-helping believers? The blame’s not all Ford’s: trying to simply define the state of “religion” in a region as varied and changing as Europe is about as quixotic an undertaking as proving or disproving America’s so-called “God-gap.” It’s a mammoth task, and one’s liable to fall back on official quotes, partisan claims and questionable lumpings-together of disparate groups. But Ford goes a step beyond the easy mistake of categorizing French yoga enthusiasts alongside crusaders like Rocco Buttiglione, suggesting that such a confused alliance should offer religious leaders hope that Europe’s coming “clash of civilizations” might not pit Christians against Muslims, but instead “believers of all faiths against nonbelievers.” Ford offers the cheery example of the British Christians who supported December’s Sikh protests because a “violation” of any religion’s sacred place should be seen as an attack on all faiths. Ford closes with the musings of former European Commission president, Jacques Delors, who doesn’t predict wholesale social transformation, but rather “‘little white stones marking out a path'” towards a greater religious presence in European life. Make those bricks.