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Bawer is perhaps best known as the author of Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity, a scathing critique of Christian fundamentalism in America. Having lived across the Atlantic since 1998 (partly motivated by his desire to escape fundamentalism), he argues that throughout Europe governments have jettisoned democratic values in favor of bogus multiculturalist policies that have done little more than appease radical Islamists. To be sure, much of the argument is shaped by the author's homosexuality, and among the values that he considers endangered are Dutch-style same-sex marriage and lax drug policies.

To bolster his case, Bawer peppers his argument with personal anecdotes from his time in Holland, Norway, France and other countries, which include accounts of being the target of repeated slurs and threatened violence on the basis of his homosexuality. He paints a picture of French ghettos bursting with disaffected Muslim youths: "Few tourists notice them on their way in from the airport, but they're terrifying places where young men on government handouts loiter in the streets, returning one's gaze 'without a flicker of recognition of your shared humanity.'"

He continues: "These discontented young people – who don't think of themselves as a part of that society or subject to its laws – represent a looming challenge to 21st-century European prosperity, stability and democracy."

While this may make for a colorful narrative, the analysis too often seems to go for the "if-you're-not-paranoid-you're-not-paying-attention" approach, one that makes While Europe Slept similar in tone to Mark Steyn's best-selling jeremiad, America Alone. The barbarians-at-the-gates narrative may indeed be oversold, but Bawer does score some strong points in skewering the facile anti-Americanism that seems to be in the water in some parts of the European continent.

A more clear-eyed assessment of the future of faith in Europe is Philip Jenkins' God's Continent, a sweeping survey at least partly aimed at defusing the kind of frenzied rhetoric found in While Europe Slept. (Jenkins in fact calls into question Bawer's readiness to paint any theologically orthodox group – Muslim or Christian – as intrinsically dangerous and totalitarian.)

Indeed, perhaps a more formidable challenge to "European prosperity, stability and democracy" than disaffected Muslim youths is Europe itself. In Jenkins' words, "In demographic terms, modern Europe seems to have embarked on a self-destructive social experiment unprecedented in human history, what some have called slow-motion autogenocide."

Even so, Jenkins argues on the basis of available statistics that the so-called "Muslim birthrate" is not nearly as explosive as one is frequently led to believe by the messengers of the coming "Eurabia." While he does not soft-pedal the reality of Islamic extremism in Europe – notably including accounts of individuals who seemed to be the picture of successful integration going on to commit terrorist acts (the London transport bombers, for example) -- he also notes that Islam in Europe is experiencing stark divisions with regard to the assimilation/integration question.

Jenkins also draws attention to the fact that Muslims are by no means the only ones immigrating to Europe; Christians from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia comprise a not insignificant portion of new arrivals. Further, the ability of pilgrimage sites throughout the continent -- such as Jasna Gora in Czestochowa, Poland (beloved by Pope John Paul II) and Lourdes in France -- to attract millions annually points to an often-unnoticed renewal within European Christianity.

While God's Continent is loaded with statistics and citations, Jenkins' elegant and fluid writing never allows the text to be bogged down by the data. Beyond being an eye-opener for general readers and an invaluable resource for academics, the book injects a much-needed voice of reason into the cacophony of outsized opinions on the topic.

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Kallmer is a former research fellow with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Department of Social Development and World Peace and a graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

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While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From Within, by Bruce Bawer. Doubleday (New York, 2006). 247 pp., $23.95. God's Continent: Christianity, Islam and Europe's Religious Crisis, by Philip Jenkins. Oxford University Press (New York, 2007). 352 pp., $28.