SHALL THE RELIGIONS INHERIT THE EARTH?
Eric Kaufmann Birkbeck University
Lecture to the Ethical Society, 11 July 2010
Have Eras Of 'Irrational Dogma' Ended?
God Is Back
Religions Benefit
Islam
The Second Demographic Transition
How Darwinism Works
The South Place Ethical Society has a long association with freethinking, seeking to
surmount the strictures of religious dogma. But the long process of secularism, which saw
monotheism dethrone pagan gods, Protestantism defrock priests and popes, and, finally,
Humanism shed God entirely, is not inevitable. It may seem this way in contemporary
Europe, with its empty pews and aging parishioners. The ascent of an outspoken atheism,
borne aloft by superstars like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel
Dennett, seems to confirm it. But the wheels of religious demography are turning in the
opposite direction. This could well affect the fate of western civilization and swing the path
of modernity away from a secular End of History to a pious era of clashing fundamentalisms.
As John Gray has written, there is nothing inevitable about human moral and social
progress. Even 250 years - not to mention the last 65 -is a short time in human history and
may prove a mere detour in a path that could once more be snaking toward dogma and
moral conservatism.
Have Eras Of 'Irrational Dogma' Ended?
Bertrand Russell, whose spirit moves within this Society as well as in the laneways of
Bloomsbury where I teach, was moved to write the following just after World War II:
Social cohesion is a necessity and mankind has never yet succeeded in enforcing
social cohesion by merely rational arguments. Every community is exposed to two
opposite dangers; ossification through too much discipline and reverence for
tradition, on the one hand; on the other hand, dissolution, or subjection to foreign
conquest, through the growth of an individualism and personal independence that
makes cooperation impossible. In general, important civilisations start with a rigid
and superstitious system, gradually relaxed, and leading, at a certain stage, to a
period of brilliant genius...as the evil unfolds it leads to anarchy, thence, inevitably,
to a new tyranny, producing a new synthesis secured by a new system of dogma.
The doctrine of liberalism is an attempt to escape from this endless oscillation...to
secure a social order not based on irrational dogma...Whether this can succeed
only the future can determine.
Here is a statement of cautious optimism, that liberalism can finally overcome the
classical historians' tale of the rise and fall of civilizations, with reason and liberty no longer
vulnerable to the predations of conservative conquerors. After the Cold War others lost
Russell's shyness. Francis Fukuyama's message, for instance, is that advanced weapons
systems can now keep the barbarians at the gates out in perpetuity. Meanwhile the acids of
liberal modernity slowly transmute them from proud violent creatures into placid
acquisitive 'last men'. In the process, their horizons are widened and their dogmas fall away:
Modern education, that universal education that is absolutely crucial in preparing
societies for the modern economic world, liberates men from their attachments to
tradition and authority. They realize that their horizon is merely a horizon, not
solid land but a mirage that disappears as one grows closer, giving way to yet
another horizon beyond. That is why modern man is the last man: he has been
jaded by the experience of history, and disabused of the possibility of direct
experience of values.
If so, this would vindicate the prophesies of many modern writers, including Karl Marx, who
remarked that 'all that is sacred is profaned', Friedrich Nietzsche, who flatly pronounced,
'God is Dead', and Matthew Arnold, who lamented religion's 'long, withdrawing roar' which
he compared to the tide going out at Dover Beach.
God Is Back
Yet if we take a hard look at the numbers, religion seems to be defying its doomsayers.
Why? First, we are in the midst of a global demographic revolution which benefits religious
parts of the world and will bring religious immigrants to replace the populations of declining
secular countries. Second - and this is a more long-term development - religious women,
especially fundamentalists, now have significantly larger families than secular women. Over
generations, this will substantially reshape the population of the West.
In many ways, the story of religion's rebirth begins in the global South. The spread of
socialism and mass consumption in the twentieth century promised large-scale
modernisation, leading many to bring forward the date of religion's demise. Until the 1980s,
few could imagine the rebirth of religion as a social force. Then came the Khomeini and
Reagan revolutions of 1979-80 followed by the assassination of Egyptian president Sadat by
Islamic militants in 1981. Christian and Islamic fundamentalism seemed to come from
nowhere to reshape high politics. Ultra-orthodox Judaism grew sharply in Israel and the
diaspora. Pentecostalism exploded in Latin America, Asia and Africa in the early 1970s to
become the second largest branch of global Christianity after Catholicism. All of which gave
pause to previously unquestioned assumptions. Peter Berger, a leading sociologist of
religion who foresaw the inevitable demise of American religion recanted in the 1980s.
These revivals are primarily social and political in nature, and owe a great deal to the
decline of secular ideologies like socialism and Arab nationalism. However there is also a
demographic aspect to this, since rural-urban migration overwhelmed the relatively secular
denizens of power centres from Istanbul and Cairo to Mumbai. Pentecostalism and Islam are
the most obvious beneficiaries, but others, from Mormons and Adventists to Jehovah's
Witnesses, are notching up record growth. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge of the
Economist outline this hi detail in their book God is Back (2008).
That said, if we scratch beneath the trends, it remains a fact that most people on this
planet get their faith the old fashioned way, through inheritance. Patterns of population
change are thus a more radical engine of growth than even the most vibrant missionary
faiths. 97 percent of the world's population growth takes place in the developing world. In
1950, Europe (including the USSR), North America and Australasia comprised about 30
percent of the world. Today, they account for just 11 percent of global residents under the
age of 15 and even in the West a rising proportion of the youngest generation - half in the
US - are of non-European ancestry. During the 2020s, Ethiopia and Uganda will both surpass
Russia in population. Nigeria is already much larger. In 1950, there were two and a half
Europeans for every African. By 2050, the UN projects four Africans for every European.
Religions Benefit
What does this mean for religion? Basically, that the devout parts of the world are
disproportionately benefiting from population expansion while the reverse is true of the
more secular West and East Asia. Therefore, according to the World Religious Database, the
proportion of the world that is religious increased from 81 to 85 percent between 1970 and
2000, and is projected to rise to 87 percent by 2025. The Gallup World Poll reports that the
proportion of worldwide weekly church attenders is projected to grow from 50 to 54
percent between 2010 and 2050. Even established denominations like the Catholics and
Anglicans are recording net increases in their global membership.
There are plenty of precedents for this kind of religious population change. Consider
the increase in the conservative share of white Protestantism in the United States: of white
Protestants born in 1900, two-thirds belonged to mainline denominations. Yet among those
born in 1975, nearly two-thirds were conservative. Was this because New England
Congregationalists were being born again as Southern Baptists? Hardly. As Mike Hout,
Andrew Greeley and Melissa Wilde discovered, the shift mainly stemmed from the largescale rural to urban migration of poor, relatively fecund southerners who happened to be
members of more conservative denominations. The one-child advantage of mostly southern
and rural conservative Protestants over largely northern mainline Protestants, maintained
for over half a century, explains 75 percent of the emergence of the evangelicals to majority
status within American white Protestantism. Others see a similar story in the Muslim world,
where a flood of devout pious migrants from the countryside has transformed formerly
secularising cities.
Or look at Roman Catholicism in the United States: 20-30 percent of those raised as
Catholics are now secular or members of Protestant denominations. Yet the sheer power of
Latino Catholic immigration and high fertility (2.84 children per woman compared to 2.08
for the national average in 2003) is enough to more than overcome this. At those rates even with the same pace of losses to secularism and Protestantism - Catholicism will be the
largest religion among young Americans in 2040. Likewise, in a decade, fast-reproducing
Mormons and Muslims will outnumber American Jews - with their low 1.43 fertility rate. It's
one thing to speak of the rise of the religion in the global South, but why would this affect us
in the West?
Consider what's happening to European demography. By 2050, nearly 40 percent of
Europeans will be over age 60, an unprecedented population structure in human history.
European populations are actually already shrinking - this is evident in Eastern Europe, but is
masked by immigration in the western part of the continent. If the total fertility rate of
much of southern and eastern Europe and East Asia (1.3) persists, these countries will be
only a quarter of their present size in 2100. The North-South disparity will peak around 2050
and will drive migration from expanding religious regions to the demographically-sinking
secular West. This will bolster religion despite some losses to secularism. Already we find
that Christianity has held its own in London since 1989 while nose-diving 40 percent in the
rest of England. London, with a sixth of England's population, contains 57 percent of all its
Christian worshippers in their 20s. Unsurprisingly, 60 percent of London's Christians are
non-white and many of the city's white Christians are also of immigrant origin. London is
home to 53 percent of English Pentecostals. While mainstream denominations have lost
members, immigrant-driven Pentecostalism has grown. Furthermore, English weekly
mosque attendance now outpaces weekly attendance at Church of England services. In
France, evangelical Protestants, largely pentecostal and Parisian, have swelled from 50 to
400 thousand inside 50 years, chiefly through African immigration.
Religion is booming in Europe's immigrant gateway cities. These cities prefigure the
composition of the population of entire European countries in 2050. This growth would
matter less if we could readily identify a path to secularisation. However, the children of
non-whites in Europe - especially if they are not Christian - tend to stick with the faith of
their parents to anchor their ethnic identity. Think of Northern Ireland: it is by far the most
religious part of the UK because ethnic identity motivates religiosity. This 'cultural defence'
function of religion, noted even by secularisation theorists like Steve Brace and David
Martin, gives religion 'secular' work to do and insulates it from decline. Young people raised
in South Asian sections of Birmingham or Turkish districts in Berlin find that their Hinduism,
Buddhism or Islam is 'cool' whereas for their white counterparts, religiosity is an
embarrassing social liability, to be jettisoned or kept firmly in the closet.
Islam
This is especially noticeable for Islam. Trends across the full range of European
countries sampled in the 2004 European Social Survey and 1999-2000 European Values
Survey show that younger Muslims are as religious as their elders. This diverges from the
trend of religious decline among younger generations that one notices among European
Christians, especially Catholics. These studies suffer from small Muslim sample sizes, but
surveys which oversample ethnic minorities and immigrants reveal powerful religiosity
among European-born Muslims. Furthermore, studies of second generation ethnic Turks
and Moroccans in Holland, Sweden, Belgium and Germany find little difference in the
religiosity of immigrant and European-born generations. This confounds the secularising
assumptions developed to explain patterns of religious adherence among European
Christians. Many young European Muslims, not fully attached to their parents' ethnic
identities nor to their European nations, have gravitated to transnational Islam. They may
also be more radical - a British study found that more under-25s than over-55s supported
shari'a and Muslim-only schools and the young were also more likely to condone violence to
defend Islam.
Another possible route to secularisation is through intermarriage with the host
population. It is well known that interfaith marriage leads to weaker religious attachments
among the children. However, here again, non-Christian faiths like Islam seem to be
maintaining their boundaries with the host society. In Britain, over 90 percent of Muslims
marry Muslims. The same is true in Germany and most continental European countries
except for France. French exceptionalism owes a great deal to the particular ethnic makeup
of its Muslims. These are disproportionately drawn from those of Kabyle Berber and
Algerian loyalist background, groups which historically opposed the Arabo-Islamist ideology
of Algeria. This also explains the high degree of secularism found within this group. To an
extent we also see this with small minorities like anti-Islamist Iranians in Germany whose
families left Iran in response to the Islamic Revolution.
Ethnic Endogamy Rates, Couples, 2001 UK Census
The bar graph shows, however, that these are exceptions to the rule. In Britain, for
instance, Muslim ethnic groups like Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are heavily inmarried, with
a significant proportion hailing from specific rural regions like Sylhet in Bangladesh and
Mirpur in Pakistan. These links often structure marriage patterns and networks of exchange.
The same is true of Turks in Holland, Germany and other European countries, who maintain
strong ties to their rural Anatolian villages where the European-born often return to seek
their spouse.
The result of high retention and strong population growth through fertility and immigration
is the spectacular growth of Europe's Muslim population. Prophets of 'Eurabia' such as Mark
Steyn and Melanie Phillips are off-target when they envision a Muslim-dominated Europe
within our century. However, if Muslim fertility rates in Europe and the Muslim world
remained as they are today, then George Weigel, Bernard Lewis and Chris Caldwell would
be correct in their appraisal that many western European countries would be majority
Muslim by the next century. However, every measure of Muslim family size in Europe and
the Muslim world shows a rapid decline - with rates halving between the 1970s and 90s, and
dropping at the same rate between the 90s and 2000s. Thus the Muslim population of
western European countries is likely to stabilise around 20 percent in the 2100s: still a big
change, but not a transformative one.
Thus far our discussion has pointed to the most obvious manifestation of religious
demography, migration. But in the long run, the developing world will go through its
transition to lower birthrates, thus one could still hold a candle for secularism to prevail
over the longue duree. This would, however, neglect the signal importance of religious
pronatalism. In the bible, one hears, 'be fruitful and multiply' while a hadith of the Prophet
Muhammad reads: 'Marry women who are prolific, so that I may outnumber the peoples by
you'. Furthermore, as Pippa Norris and Ron Inglehart write:
One of the most central injunctions of virtually all traditional religions is to
strengthen the family, to encourage people to have children, to encourage women
to stay home and raise children, and to forbid abortion, divorce, or anything that
interferes with high rates of reproduction.
Secularism, by contrast, liberates the individual from communal obligations and frees
women from traditional gender roles. The new outlook reached its apogee in the 1960s
sexual revolution, which radically altered western attitudes pertaining to the family. The
changes were strongly generational, which resulted in a pattern of slow but steady change
as younger generations entered adulthood and older cohorts progressively died off. For
example, while more than half of those over 65 in developed countries in 1981 claimed that
a woman needs children to be fulfilled, just 35 percent of those 15-24 agreed. The social
upheaval of the sixties had an enormous impact on fertility. Divorce and illegitimacy rose as
birth rates fell. In Ron Inglehart's words, 'post-materialists place more emphasis on selffulfillment through careers, rather than through ensuring the survival of the species.' Then
there was the new availability of contraception. Wolfgang Lutz and his collaborators have
written that:
Through the introduction of modern contraception, the evolutionary link between
the drive for sex and procreation has been broken and now reproduction is merely
a function of individual preferences and culturally determined norms.
The Second Demographic Transition
The emergence of a cleft between the secular, who spearhead the shift to belowreplacement fertility (in some cases below one child per woman), the moderately religious,
who remain near replacement, and fundamentalists, whose birthrates are well above 2.1 is
part of what demographers like Ron Lesthaeghe refer to as the 'second demographic
transition'. This process of values becoming increasingly important in governing family size
emerges more strongly as modernity proceeds. And if these new trends continue, entire
populations will be shaped in a religiously fundamentalist direction.
For instance, in France, observant white Catholic women bear about a half-child more than
secular women. In Spain, 200 observant Catholic parents will have an average of 177
children over their lives against just 100 for their secular counterparts. Fundamentalists are
especially fecund: ultra-Orthodox Jewish women in Israel average 7.5 children apiece
against little more than 2 for mainstream Jews. Orthodox Calvinist villages are the youngest
places in Holland. Muslim women in Middle Eastern cities who are most supportive of
shari'a law have twice the birth rate of those Muslim women who are most opposed to
shari'a. In the United States, Mormons and neofundamentalist Protestants average one
child per woman more than the national average.
The Quiverfull neo-Calvinist pronatalist movement take things to their logical
conclusion, advocating 'God as family planner'. Its leaders envision themselves presiding
over 'dynasties' of hundreds of thousands of descendants and promote a '200-year plan' for
dominating the United States by outbreeding the less devout. In a century or two, as the
world's population contracts, these small explosive movements could change the world.
Indeed, were it not for large families, Mormons would be a minority of Utah's population,
rather than 75 percent. Ultra-Orthodox Jews already form a third of Israel's Jewish first
graders, up from a few percent in 1960 and will comprise a majority of Jews in Israel and the
diaspora by the second half of this century. Once again, demography holds the key to these
social and political changes.
How Darwinism Works
Darwin's theory of natural selection works through demographic mechanisms: genes which
convey slight advantages in fertility or, more typically, mortality, win out in the evolutionary
race. Some argue that religion was adaptive for humanity because it promoted the
cooperation and cohesion which our evolutionary competitors lacked, and that we cannot
do without it. The world's impending population decline, beginning in Europe and East Asia
in the early and mid 21st century and extending to Africa and South Asia towards its end,
may provide the population bottleneck through which only the devout may pass. This is a
tempting conclusion when we look at the profound demographic advantage of
fundamentalists over seculars. However, a shift in the political wind could swiftly end
fundamentalism's currently adaptive 'r-strategy' of high reproduction. Sixty years ago, when
Orthodox Jews were slaughtered like sheep while their more worldly co-ethnics often
survived, secularism - with its 'K' strategy of high investment in the skills of small numbers of
children - would have been seen as more adaptive.
As the social environment - what Dawkins calls a 'memeplex' - changes, |l
so do the criteria of natural selection and therefore the fittest creed. What is
™
today's environment like? We see the collapse of the great secular religions of
the twentieth century; the growing importance of values in determining fertility;
an uneven demographic transition which is reshaping western populations; the
rise of global identity politics; all this in an atmosphere of multicultural
toleration. The confluence of these currents creates a nutrient-rich breeding
ground for religious fundamentalism. How to stop it?
No liberal would advocate authoritarian measures, but these momentous changes
may force a cruel, Abrahamic choice upon them: whether to save their society by sacrificing
toleration or to remain true to their values even in defeat. In John Rawls' words, 'justice
does not require that men stand idly by while others destroy the basis of their existence.'
However, Rawls urges liberals to tolerate the intolerant unless they pose a threat to the
institutions of liberty. Today, as Britain's decision tolerate the burqa reveals, this is possible.
In the future it may not be.
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