Will the religious inherit the earth?

George: Hello and welcome to this podcast from Blackwell Online. My name is George Miller and my guest today is Eric Kaufmann who's a reader in Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck in London. This month, Eric is bringing out a book entitled Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth ? To which a simple is yes, probably, if the demographic trend which suggests a correlation between fundamentalist belief and fertility rate continues.

Eric argues that as those with strong religious beliefs – be they Muslim, Christian or Jewish – increase in number so too will their political clout and that has implications for freedoms the liberal modernity has led us to take for granted in the West – freedom of choice over birth control and abortion, freedom of speech, women's rights and so on. So I began my interview by remarking that the book gave a strong impression that the gains made by modern secularism were far from irreversible.

Eric: Yeah, that's one of the messages of the book is that, in fact, we have seen secularization. We're seeing it now, particularly in Western Europe, but that actually it is reversible. It's not necessarily going to be the case that you're going to have mass religious enthusiasm that's going to reverse secularism or people drifting back into the churches, it's much more a case in my book of a sort of hidden mechanism – a slow return of religion through demography through, in this case, either religious immigration or through higher religious fertility than secular fertility. George: Let's tease apart those two things then. Eric: Sure.

George: Tell me about demography.

How does demography work in tandem with the changing shape of the religious complexion of the planet?

Eric: Alright. Most people on the planet get their religions from their parents, so it's a largely inherited faith. There are actually comparatively few people who choose their religion. I mean it's more common in the United States than anywhere else, but, still, there's a very high inherited component. What that means is then demography is going to have a big impact on faith. So Islam is the world's fastest growing major religion and that is because of demography. It's because the Muslim world has had large, very fast, population growth compared to other parts of the world. That's just one example of how demography can affect religion; whereas, atheism and non-religion has declined. Now that isn't strictly just because of demography, it's also because of the collapse of communism, but it's also because of demography, so the two things together have an impact. George: Do you think there is a relationship between these fertility rates of atheists and believers in terms of their world view -- that the world view of an atheist tends to be more individualistic therefore the birth rate drops; whereas, there's a more communitarian attitude among religious believers? Eric: Yeah. I mean that's sort of one of the aspects that I get into in my book and that is that there's a link. I mean if you look at the holy texts, particularly the Abrahamic texts ‘go forth and multiply', for example, there's an emphasis on women in the role of mothers and traditional women's roles. Those emphases on traditional gender roles and on fertility will lead to higher fertility, if you take those injunctions seriously. So there is a reason to believe there's actually a logic behind higher religious fertility, particularly higher religious fundamentalist fertility. And we can also talk about injunctions against birth control and abortion and so forth.

Likewise with secularism this idea of expressive individualism fits in very well with delaying childbirth, perhaps choosing to travel and have a career, also women's liberation, all of these things. So you would think, logically, they would lead to different fertility patterns and, in fact, the data pretty well all over the world shows that trend. And, really, I think we also need to distinguish there are two trends here: 1. One is the fact that the religious, particularly fundamentalists, have higher fertility than moderate and secular people.

2. The other is the indirect effect.

The indirect effect is where you have poor people or rural people who happen to be more religious and happen to have large families. They have large families not because they're more religious, but because they're poor. But they happen also to be religious, so when they move to the cities, when they move to more prosperous societies, they bring their religion with them. So there are two things going on – one is the direct effect of religious people having more kids and the other is the indirect effect of poor people (A) having more kids and (B) being more religious.

George: As parts of the developing world become better off, as sanitation, as infant mortality are addressed, do you believe that the fertility rate will drop among the religious or do you think that the trend line will continue in its present direction?

Eric: Well, in the developing world what's already happening is fertility rates are coming down quite quickly. In fact, the UN predicts that by the mid '20-‘30s we'll have replacement-level fertility on a worldwide basis. So it's already happening, but what's important to note is it's actually happening to poor countries. But if you look within those countries, there is a growing disjunction between the fundamentally religious and the rest.

This is partly what some of the new demographic theories are discovering. Is that as infant mortality is cut, as there's better sanitation, as there's more availability of contraception, how many children you have is no longer forced upon you by material circumstances, such as having to have children because most of them will die or because they need to work the land. So why do you have more children? Increasingly it becomes a choice; increasingly it becomes linked to values, so you have a stronger and stronger link between religious fundamentalism, religious belief and fertility.

So in the Muslim world, for example, in the countryside there's no real connection between how much you support Sharia law and how many children you have. In the cities, where there is less of a material incentive to have children there is more availability of contraception. There you actually see a growing gap between those who believe strongly in Sharia – that that should be the law of the land – they have twice the fertility rate of those who are most opposed to Sharia. So actually what's happening is in the more modern context, you get a bigger gap between the religious and the secular, so it's almost a curious aspect of modernization. George: Do you think there is a serious threat to Western liberal secular ways of life in this demographic shift that you describe?

Eric: I actually do. I think it's a longer-term threat. It's shorter term in some societies, but I think it's a matter of a century or two, if we're really talking about major shifts in Western Europe or in the United States. But I think you can look at certain countries, such as Israel, and see the shift happening more quickly. So if you look at the ultra orthodox in Israel who have three times the fertility of other Jews, particularly of secular Jews, they've increased from several percentage of the population in 1948 to…I mean if you look at the primary schools in Israel, one-third of Jewish primary schoolers in grade one are now ultra orthodox. That's up from several percent in 1960. The same thing is actually happening in the Jewish Diaspora. So in Britain and the United States, ultra orthodox have three to four times the fertility rate. In Britain they are 17% of the Jewish population; they're three-quarters of the Jewish births. So you see these astounding trends. By 2050 they'll have taken over Anglo jury, American jury and in Israel it will happen in the second half of this century, so that's going to mean an astounding change. Already you're seeing the power of the ultra orthodox parties in Israel has multiplied. They are now a factor in the peace process in blocking concessions on East Jerusalem and in a whole series of issues. That's only going to become more powerful. I mean they're involved in boycotts of particular products that promote evolution and they're involved in Shabbat – sort of no driving on the Sabbath in parts of Jerusalem. So that kind of politics is going to become more influential as a result of demography -- of the kind that I'm talking about. Yes, it's happening first in Israel, but I believe it's a manifestation of a broader trend that will make itself felt also in Europe and the Untied States. George: You talk about those with fundamentalist beliefs making common cause with other fundamentalists of different faiths within a particular polity in order to affect political change like, for example, on abortion or birth control.

Eric: Yeah. I mean we see this particularly in the U.S., but also in Europe. So in the United States you've had very good cooperation between conservative Mormons, conservative evangelicals and conservative Catholics and also, incidentally, conservative Jews and Muslims. Prior to 9/11 a lot of conservative Muslims were in the republican camp, partly because of this support for traditional gender roles and family values and, in fact, we look at some recent political developments. In California Proposition 8 – the Anti-Gay Marriage Proposition -- which passed, because of cooperation between Mormon, Catholic, evangelical, Latino, Catholic, African-American. They were all cooperating and managed to win the vote on the basis of that sort of ecumenical or interfaith fundamentalism.

George: I thought it was fascinating what you say about why some movements or sects or cults succeed and why others dwindle.

I wondered if you would, maybe as a case study, say a little bit about the sort of respective positions of the Jehovah's Witnesses and of the Mormons because, one, the Mormons seem to be going from strength to strength and the Jehovah's Witnesses seem to be sort of stalled and it seems that they sort of exemplify different aspects of what makes a fundamentalist belief system thrive or fail. Eric: What I argue is there are really two types of fundamentalism. There is the more evangelical, open, proselytizing fundamentalism, which is actually much more successful in the developing world, so Pentecostalism, for example, in Latin-America, in Africa, parts of Asia, has been a roaring success and, actually, so have the Jehovah's Witnesses. Partly because they are open -- they aren't closed -- they are able to make more converts than say the Amish or perhaps the ultra orthodox. However, those sorts of evangelical fundamentalists, I would argue, are not very successful in the West – in the more jaded, modern context of the Western world -- what Waber would call ‘disenchanted' context where people are no so easily swayed by their arguments. What I argue is that in the more secular contexts of the West, it's the groups that grow their own and that have strong communal boundaries that do well. The ultra orthodox, the Mormons, the Amish, for example, these are groups that are actually amongst the fastest growing or the fastest growing religions in the West.

People don't necessarily think of this, but only the very fastest-growing nondenominational mega churches in the U.S. can match the Amish or Hutterite growth rates and so I look to them as sort of a model. And increasingly you can see American fundamentalists seeing what's going on and saying we have to emulate the Mormons and the ultra orthodox. We have to have stronger communal boundaries. We have to have higher fertility. They're trying, in Daniel Dennis' words, to kind of ‘backwards engineer' and design a successful religion based around these properties. The most extreme example of that in the U.S. is the Quiverfull Movement. The founder of the Quiverfull Movement is Doug Phillips who's the son of Christian Right founder Howard Phillips, so it has a lot of political clout. He has eight children himself and their vision is no birth control, no abortion. We're going to have as large families as we can. That's a sign from God. He actually has what he calls ‘a 200 year plan' for domination, based on the fact that everyone else's fertility is declining and the Quiverfull, if they can maintain their fertility, will have dynasties. I mean some of the Quiverfull leaders talk about having dynasties of hundreds of thousands of descendants in 200 years. That is an explicit goal of this movement and I think that's just a reflection of the kind of fundamentalism that will be successful in a Western context and that we're probably going to see more of in a century or two and that the influence of that kind of group is going to be very much more important. Yes, Israel is the first place it's going to be important, but I think that paradigm will spread to other parts of the West as well. George: So is it being overdramatic to say that secular liberalism, with it's commitment to individualism, toleration, (????? ), contains the seeds of its own destruction?

Eric: I think it does, but I would hasten to say it does under current conditions. I don't want to suggest that religious fundamentalism will inevitably win, but I think under current conditions it will win, effectively. That the contradiction is this – that is, that fundamentalism is a reaction -- a response to secularism -- and secularism, in operating with a sort of very individualistic ethos, is going to have trouble sustaining itself demographically.

So, whereas, if you look at Karl Marx and his model of the collapse of, if you like, the liberal capitalist system, he argues it was going to be the contradictions between labor and capital that would lead to the collapse of the system.

You then have other writers, such as Daniel Bell who I quote a lot in the book, saying ‘Well, no, it's actually going to be cultural contradictions between the need for a disciplined work ethic to sustain capitalism and the ethos of heathenism within capitalism which undermines the system. '  But, actually, that hasn't occurred. The system has coped with social breakdown of the family, etc. rather well. What I'm arguing is really what the threat is going to come from is not a breakdown of capitalism, but rather this slow demographic takeover by anti-liberal elements within liberal societies. So, in a way, you could argue the contradiction is between secularism's aims and its ability to sustain itself demographically. So I think there's definitely something happening there. I mean if we put it in the context of Francis Fukuyama's argument about the end of history – liberal democratic capitalism – my argument is and Fukuyama says if you read classical writers -- Polybius and Cicero or even Khaldun in the Arab world -- their argument was well, advanced civilizations always succumb to individualism and decadence and they have to be taken over and reinvigorated by barbarians, such as Visigoths or in the case of the Arabs it was the Mongols. That these groups then bring a sort of less-sophisticated but stronger social cohesion.

Fukuyama says ‘Well, actually, the sort of Western liberal democratic societies are protected now by advanced weapon systems, so they can't be sacked by barbarians who may have stronger social cohesion. '  However, I think another possibility is where you might have, again, not an external guns-blazing kind of takeover, but a sort of internal conquest by more disciplined, high-fertility, high- boundary groups; these endogenous growth groups just slowly, generation after generation, becoming a larger and larger share of the population. Maybe religious immigration will play a role in that too, gradually conquering from the inside. So there is where I would see the challenge, if you like, to the end of history model.

George: Eric Kaufmann. Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? is published this month in paperback. You can find out full details on the Blackwell Website at Blackwell.co.uk.

Until next time, thank you for listening and goodbye.