‘Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?’: Demography Is Destiny
A review of ‘Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?’ by Eric Kaufmann; Profile Books, 2010.
It has been noted often enough that Western countries, in any case those with a welfare state, work like Ponzi schemes. The wealth of those at the top rests on new members ‘joining’ at the bottom. When people live longer and fertility falls, which is the trend in these countries today, there are fewer and fewer young people to pay for more and more of the old. And so, to address this problem, governments for thirty years have turned to immigration. The trouble is that this creates problems of its own, or is seen to, which is why, in much of Europe, the public has turned against it. So unless those of us settled in a given country start breeding, or unless governments start rolling back the welfare state, then, effectively, the country will soon go broke.
Some countries have taken up this challenge. Hungary, whose government turned away from immigration years ago, is a case in point. But its experience shows that boosting fertility is not as easy as it looks. The state has incentivised childbearing through generous tax breaks, subsidised housing, cheap childcare, I.V.F. treatment coverage, and direct cash transfers. It now spends 5 per cent of G.D.P.—more, pound-for-pound, than the Americans spend on defence. But it has not worked. The total fertility rate (T.F.R) has certainly climbed, certainly; yet it is still some way off the magic number of 2.1: replacement rate. In other words, the population is still falling.
Hungary now spends 5 per cent of G.D.P. — more, pound-for-pound, than the Americans spend on defence.
It seems that the more secular a society becomes, the fewer children people have. Framed as a choice among choices and not, say, a sacred duty, many simply choose not to have children. That raises a question: Who does? Well, the religious; and the more religious they are, the more children they tend to have. So Eric Kaufmann, demographer, professor of politics at Buckingham, Director of the Centre for Heterodox Social Science, is perhaps not unreasonable in asking the question: Shall the religious inherit the Earth?
Kaufmann’s starting-point is the claim that secularism is demographically vulnerable. Wherever faith has fallen—France, the Netherlands, Canada—so has fertility. In these same places, as elsewhere, religious groups have continued to grow. And the stricter and more observant the group, the more fertile it is: this is the case for Haredi Jews, Mormons, and Old Order Amish. When high fertility meets high retention and endogamy (marrying within the community), the demographic effect is explosive. Over a relatively short spell of time, it issues in profound changes across society.
The more hardline the group, the more fertile it is: this is the case for Haredi Jews, Mormons, and Old Order Amish.
To show this, Kaufmann presents three case studies. In the United States, the religious Right did not vanish after the cultural disruption of the 1960s. It drew strength and influence from the cradle. Fundamentalist Christians have many more children than the non-religious, and those children tend to remain within the fold. Some do leave; but not nearly enough to halt the group’s expansion. In Israel, where the Haredim, sometimes called ‘ultra-Orthodox’, have grown from a small minority to a group with political clout, it is a similar story. They are now sufficiently strong to reshape national policy in their image. Certain Muslim communities in Britain and the Netherlands also have high rates of fertility and faith. This gives them an ever-greater say over national affairs.
Kaufmann, a self-described ‘third-generation secularist’, offers no view as to whether these trends are anything to be concerned about. He sticks to the data, merely pointing out that logically speaking, if two groups hold incompatible beliefs then they are going to come into conflict sooner or later. Indeed, we have already seen this in liberal societies between non-religious factions of the national community. Pluralism breeds this sort of thing. Interestingly, he shows that often people of different religions join hands to take on the secularists. This is why, in the United States, fundamentalist Christians have traditionally been liberal on immigration: most new arrivals to America are religious. If anything, what seems to run beneath the surface of Kaufmann’s analysis is an appreciation of the irony. After all, the enlightened secular liberal who sees childbearing as just another lifestyle choice may be made a minority by those whose beliefs he scorns as backward. That is not to say that all secular liberals hold religion in contempt; but a cursory glance at the intellectual scene over the past few decades shows there are plenty who do. It is almost certainly an evolutionary benefit to be religious, Kaufmann says. The gods, it seems, favour those who believe in them.
The enlightened secular liberal who sees childbearing as a lifestyle choice may be made a minority by those whose beliefs he scorns as backward.
It is this sort of thing that gives the book its polemical flavour. The secular liberal may win debates, but not the demographic battle. ‘Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall?’ so says Dom Paulo in A Canticle for Liebowitz. On Kaufmann’s view, if civilisations rise and fall, it is perhaps due to something subtler and rather simpler than ideas or the gobbling-up of resources: the willingness and ability to ‘go forth and multiply’. Kaufmann writes of the spread of Christianity:
Conversion was certainly important, but demographic forces were arguably more vital. Christianity’s family-centred ethos sharply contrasted with the more macho, promiscuous ethos of pagan Hellenism. This had two effects. The first was to boost the Christian birth rate above that of the pagans, the second to attract a disproportionate number of female converts. Women’s role in socialising the next generation means that a female-dominated sex ratio leads to a disproportionate number of Christian children. In addition, Christians cared for their sick during plagues, dramatically reducing mortality. Higher fertility, lower mortality and a female skew in the childbearing age ranges endowed Christians with a significant demographic advantage over pagans.
It seems the pagans had no chance.
One could argue that Kaufmann irons out the creases of individual difference. Not every Mormon or Haredi Jew is the same. Well, of course. But if his treatment of the Muslim world seems to be a little broad-brush, or if in general one has the sense that he has spent too much time with the data and too little time with the people it concerns, the fact remains that, on average, there are clear trends in certain faith groups’ fertility, and these show no signs of changing. It is true that religions splinter; people leave; reformist movements spring up. But when the average woman in a given community has 6.6 children — well, that group is going to get bigger, and that is going to alter the surrounding order. Kaufmann notes, without undue fuss, the possible implications threats to science, freedom of expression, and other elements seen as basic to liberal life.
One could argue that Kaufmann irons out the creases of individual difference. Not every Mormon or Haredi Jew is the same.
It seems to me that if having children is framed as a lifestyle choice, which is the case in the liberal West, then of course many will choose a different road. In liberal societies, personal freedom, expressed through choice, and often by means of the market, has been affirmed as the highest good; but to have a child is to set oneself aside for the sake of something—someone—else. To have many children is to do that in perpetuity. This is a thoroughly counter-cultural thing to do. For one cannot be a free-floating Anywhere when one has a family. One is of necessity anchored in the culture of which one is a part. I would certainly not go so far as to say that those without children have no care for the future. But having a child does force one to care. Family is bound up with a recognition that society is a trust, a ‘partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born,’ as Burke put it. Reproduction is the basic unit of tradition. Children bind us to time.
Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? was published in 2010 and at the time seemed a rather eccentric book. Since then, pro-natalism has become a ‘thing’, more often than not cast as a perceived means to ‘save civilisation’. Anti-natalists have emerged: was it not A.O.C. who said she would not have children because they would add to the warming of the planet? (It is impossible not to add that this, too, reflects a kind of faith.) Kaufmann was prescient, if bold, in that he foresaw the role demography would play in our century. And it seems to me that he was right to note that, in evolutionary terms, the intellect yields to emotion: habit, belonging and a willingness to sacrifice oneself moves the wheels of cultural history. Whether the prospect of the religious inheriting the Earth alarms or amuses you or rouses no feeling whatever will rest, I imagine, on your own beliefs. The future, for Kaufmann, is plural but perhaps less liberal; religious if not theocratic; socially conservative, but—if the surveys are to be trusted—probably happier.
