The Archbishop of Canterbury has called for a "positive definition" of Europe.
Dr Rowan Williams gave a lecture in Liverpool Cathedral during a two-day visit to the city, European Capital of Culture 2008.
In the speech, entitled Europe, Faith and Culture, he said that much discussion suggests people are better at saying what Europe is not, rather than identifying what it is.
Dr Williams said: "But we need from time to time to try and rescue a positive definition of some sort; which means a bit of history and a bit of political philosophy...
"We need to understand some of the most basic things for which the word Europe stands when it is used positively, we need some thinking about religion as well specifically about Christianity.
"And if the presence of Europe in the world hasn't been and isn't now exclusively a source of good things, it may be...we find the problems appear in proper perspective only when we've thought harder about these religious issues..."
He said that a way forward "from some of our world's most stale and destructive situations" could happen only when such work had been done.
Dr Williams said he was treating a great deal of what the US presented as its "unique contribution" to the world as derivative from certain trends which start in Europe.
He continued: "Grace Davie has written of the European exception in discussing the patterns of religious commitment and practice in our world.
"She is of course saying this in the light also of the statistically high level of religious practice in the USA; but I'd want to suggest that since religion in the USA is characterised by many deeply untraditional features, by a sort of market principle of maximum variety and choice, it is itself as untypical as Europe in the context of what the rest of the human race thinks about religion."
