There is, for instance, that question which Ernst Wolfgang Böckenförde posed in the 1960s: “Does the free, secularised state exist on the basis of normative presuppositions that it itself cannot guarantee?” It is rare to hear this question even raised in our societies. Perhaps we sense the answer is “yes” but we do not know what to do if this is the case.

But in fact the wind of opinion in recent years appears to have begun to blow against those who insist that Western liberal societies owe nothing to the religion from which they arose. Partly because the more we become acquainted with other traditions, the harder it becomes to sustain. Indeed, although some people still hold out, it should be evident by now that the culture of human rights has more to do with the creed preached by Moses and Jesus of Nazareth than that of, say, Muhammad. Nevertheless, the question of whether this societal position is sustainable without reference to the beliefs that gave it birth remains deeply pregnant and troubling in the West.

Perhaps we also do not ask these deeper questions not only because we do not believe the answers we used to give but because we sense that we are in some sense in an interim period of our development and that our answers may be about to change. A recent survey by Pew showed that affiliation to Christianity is falling away in Britain faster than in almost any other country. By 2050, the Pew projection suggests, religious affiliation to Christianity will have fallen by a third in the UK from almost two thirds in 2010 and will thus become a minority affiliation for the first time. By the same date, Pew says, Britain will have the third largest Muslim population in Europe, higher than France, Germany or Belgium. All such predictions are of course rife with possible variations. For instance, they assume that Christians will continue to become non-religious while Muslims will not. Which may be the case or may not. In any case, these are movements — like those across Europe and America (where Muslims will by the same date outnumber Jews among the US population) — which cannot fail to have significant repercussions.

Whatever the reasons, it is striking that addressing or even acknowledging questions of meaning has become so uncommon. Despite the unparalleled opportunity, our mass media and multimedia use their power almost solely to purvey distraction and gossip. Meanwhile, the highest ends of our culture say — at best — that the world is complex and that we must simply embrace the complexity and not look for answers. Yet avoiding this discussion is, in the long term, likely to prove a terrible mistake. We live in an age of extraordinary prosperity, but it might not always be like this. Even today, when the sun of economic advantage still shines upon us, there are people who notice a gap in our culture and are finding their own ways to fill it.

For some years now I have been especially struck by accounts I have heard and read of people who have chosen to convert to Islam. Partly these stories are striking because they are so similar — and not only to each other. They are almost always some variant of a story nearly any young person could tell. They generally go something like this: “I had reached X age (often the twenties or early thirties) and I was in a nightclub and I was drunk and I just thought, ‘Life must be about more than this’.” Almost nothing else in our culture says, “But of course this is not all.” Instead the voice of our culture just says, “repeat, repeat.” In the absence of such a voice they search, and they discover Islam. The fact that they land on Islam is a story in itself. Why do these young men and women (very often women) not reach out and find Christianity? Partly it is because most branches of mainstream Christianity have lost the confidence to proselytise. Partly it is the trickle-down effect of the fact that Islamic traditions have not yet been so affected by historical criticism and scholarship. (I say “yet” because that scholarship is starting. Many Muslims sense it and they are fighting with all they have to hold it back because they know what it is going to do.)