The future belongs to the children of believers
Secularists may die out, says Ed West

18 June 2010

Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?
By Eric Kaufmann
Profile, £15

Reading this book, one is torn between feelings of gloom and dread on the one hand and a satisfactory and warm sense of "I told you so" on the other. Eric Kaufmann, Birkbeck College's expert on demographics and religion, has studied birth rates in hundreds of different locations over many different eras and his conclusion is we're facing a world split between religious fundamentalists and atheists.

The United States will become ever more dominated by evangelicals, who have gone from being a third to two thirds of white Christians in a short space of time. But also by smaller groups such as the Hutterites (who have grown from 400 to 50,000 in a century) and the old order Amish, now numbering 250,000 and reproducing at a rapid rate. Far more numerous still will be the Mormons, whose fecundity will ensure they will become a major world religion by the end of the century.

Meanwhile Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists and the other older Christian groups will continue to wither, both in the US and in Europe; most younger members will become atheists, with a smaller number joining more conservative dominations, and a small, dedicated hardcore remaining.

Conventional wisdom has it that religious dominance is determined by the battle of ideas, with atheism the natural winner, but, as Kaufmann illustrates, this is not necessarily true.

After World War Two, Europe decided to make love, not war, with welfare states and lifestyle choices, but the problem is they make neither. As Kaufmann writes: "The 1960s produced a cultural earthquake whose shock waves continue to reverberate through modern societies. Attitudes towards race, religion, sexuality, gender roles, self-expression and the family became remarkably more liberal in this period and have remained so ever since ... Drug and alcohol use, psychotherapy, unconventional relationships, as well as fondness for jazz and experimental art were staples of the bohemian intellectual scene on both sides of the Atlantic by 1914."

The most significant effect of these societal changes, Kaufmann says, is in lower birth rates. But there are also unintended consequences, for example, that there has been a rise in the fertility gap between secular people and the religious. And as no atheist society has ever lasted more than a couple of generations, so Europe's religious vacuum has been filled by something else.

Kaufmann is very much the calm, sceptical academic, but even he predicts that by mid-century Sweden will be about 20-25 per cent Muslim, while Austria could be 36 per cent Muslim by the century's end. The rest of western Europe will become between 10 and 25 per cent Islamic, a result of the continent's need to import migrants to do the jobs natives won't do - the most important job being breeding.

Does this matter? It depends. Kaufmann's first major area of study was Northern Ireland, and he has a keen understanding of the complexities of demographic imbalance and conflict in places like Israel/Palestine, Bosnia and the Lebanon. Religion, far more than skin colour, acts as a barrier to integration and prevents the growth of functioning societies, leading to ethnicity-based politics and, in the worst cases, war.

On the other hand, he says, the growth of religious minorities in the US has led to a pan-conservative alliance, with Protestant conservatives, after initial hostility, joining forces with conservative Catholics and later Jews and even Muslims.

Such moral conservatism on issues such as abortion and marriage is enough to unite them against a common enemy. Significantly, on the day that Barack Obama was elected President, a moment of metropolitan liberal triumph on account not just of the new president's colour but his social liberalism, voters in California passed a proposition outlawing gay marriage.

That Proposition 8 passed had much to do with the increased number of black voters turning up to elect Obama and, while they were there, voting against gay marriage. If European conservatives find that such a realignment pays off more than ethnic nationalism, our politics will gain an American flavour.

This is a brilliantly written, heavily researched and original book with a fascinating theory that goes against modern orthodoxies. If it is proven true it will become not just a great read, but one of the truly great works of the era. Who will be around to read it is another matter.

One wonders if secular atheists will end up like the Shakers, the Protestant sect who refuse to breed and are now confined to four individuals in southern Maine.