22 PROSPECT November 2006

TH E M O D E R N W E S T E R N world is insep a-rable from the idea of s e c u l a r i s at i o n .From Socrates’s refusal to acknow l e d g ethe Greek gods to Copernicus’s hereti-cal idea that the earth revo l ved around

the sun to the French revolution’s ove rt h r ow of r e l i-gious authority, the path of m o d e rnity seemed to leadaw ay from the claims of religion. In our own time, thedecline in church attendance in Europe is seen as ev i-dence that secular modernity has entered the lives ofo r d i n a ry people. Some optimistic secularists even seesigns that the US, noted as a religious exc ep t i o namong we s t e rn nat i o n s, is finally showing ev i d e n c eo f declining church at t e n d a n c e. But amid the appar-ent dusk of faith in Europe, one can already spot thereligious owl of M i n e rva taking flight. This religiousr ev i val may be as profound as that which changed thec o u rse of the Roman empire in the 4th century.

In his remarkable book The Rise of C h r i s t i a n i t y, theAmerican sociologist of religion Rodney Starkexplains how an obscure sect with just 40 conve rts inthe year 30AD became the official religion of t h eRoman empire by 300. The standard answer to thisquestion is that the emperor Constantine had a visionwhich led to his conve rsion and an embrace of C h r i s-t i a n i t y. Stark demonstrates the fl aws in this “gr e atm a n ” p o rt rait of h i s t o ry. Christianity, he say s,expanded at the dra m atic rate of 40 per cent a decadefor over two centuries, and this upsurge was onlyp a rt ly the result of its appeal to the wider populat i o no f Hellenistic paga n s. Christian demogra p hy was justas important. Unlike the paga n s, Christians cared fo rtheir sick during plagues rather than ab a n d o n i n gthem, which sharp ly lowered mort a l i t y. In contrast tothe “macho” ethos of p aga n s, Christians emphasisedmale fidelity and marr i ag e, which at t racted a higherp e r c e n t age of female conve rt s, who in turn ra i s e d

more Christian children. Moreove r, adds Stark,Christians had a higher fertility rate than paga n s,yielding even gr e ater demographic adva n t ag e.

The ancient sources which Stark draws upon areopen to question. Less contestable is the fact that manyl at t e r - d ay religious groups have thrived thanks to highf e rt i l i t y. The Morm o n s, for ex a m p l e, like Stark’s earlyC h r i s t i a n s, have maintained a 40 per cent per decadep o p u l ation gr owth rate for 100 ye a rs. They remain 70per cent of Utah’s population in the teeth of s u b s t a n t i a ln o n - M o rmon immigration, and have even ex p a n d e dinto neighbouring stat e s. In the 1980s, the Morm o nf e rtility rate was around three times that of A m e r i c a nJew s. To d ay the Morm o n s, once a fringe sect, outnum-ber Jews among Americans under the age of 45.

D e m ogra p hy is also critical to explaining the riseo f the religious right in America. An import a n trecent article in the American Jo u rnal of S o c i o l ogy byMichael Hout, Andrew Greeley and Melissa Wi l d eexamines trends in American religious denomina-tional gr owth in the 20th century. The authors findt h at conservat i ve Protestant denominat i o n sincreased their share of all white Protestants fromone third among those born in 1900 to two thirds fo rthose born in 1975. Three quart e rs of the gr owth ofwhite conservat i ve Protestant denominations isd e m ogra p h i c, since they have maintained a fert i l i t ya d va n t age over more liberal denominations for manyd e c a d e s. As with the rise of Christianity itself, slow -m oving sociological pressures created the conditionsfor a political “tipping point” to occur. This time,Rep u blican strat egists played the role of C o n s t a n-tine’s advisers, who saw which way the wind wasbl owing and moved to exploit the new social trends.

Outside the US, there is further evidence for thist h e s i s. In Israel, the gr owth of the ultra - O rt h o d oxp r o p o rtion of the Jewish population is all but assuredbecause of their threefold fertility adva n t age ove rsecular Jew s. Elsewhere in the middle east, the rela-t i ve decline of A rab Christians—especially in their

Breeding for GodIn Europe, the fertility advantage of the religious over non-believers hashistorically been counterbalanced by the march of secularisation. Not anymore. Secularisation in Europe has reached saturation point, and Islamcontinues to grow. We will soon enter a new age of religious resurgence

BY ERIC KAU F M A N N

Eric Kaufmann is a lecturer in politics at Birkbeck Collegeand the author of “ The Rise and Fall of A n gl o - A m e r i c a ”

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Lebanese heartland—has nothing to do with conve r-sion and eve rything to do with demogra p hy.

The share of the world’s population that is reli-gious is gr ow i n g, after nearly a century of m o d e s td e c l i n e. Much of this effect has been produced by theyounger generations in the developing world reject-ing secularisation, combined with higher religious fer-tility leve l s. Throughout the world, the religious tendto have more children, irr e s p e c t i ve of ag e, educat i o nor wealth. “Secular” Europe is no exc eption to thisru l e. In an analysis of European data from ten we s tEuropean countries in the period 1981-2004, I fo u n dsome surprising results. Next to age and maritals t at u s, a woman’s religiosity was thestrongest predictor of her number of o f f-s p r i n g. Numerous other studies havefound a similar relat i o n s h i p, and awhole school of thought in demog-ra p hy—“second demogra p h i ct ransition theory ” — s u gg e s t st h at fertility differences in deve l-oped countries are underp i n n e dby value differences, with secu-lar men and women unwillingto sacrifice career and lifestylea s p i rations to have childrenand have them early.

WE A R E n ow livingthrough the firs tm o d e rn decade in

which Europe’s population hasdeclined for reasons other thanwar or disease. This represents thed e l ayed demographic reaction to thea rr i val of b e l ow - r eplacement fert i l i t ysome 30 ye a rs ago. As Europe’s popula-tion stock declines, it will in part ber eplaced by new populat i o n s. It is easiest tosee the effect of p o p u l ation replacement in ethnicand racial term s, because non-white immigrants areve ry visible in Europe’s host societies. The idea thatone ethnic group can demogra p h i c a l ly replace anotherwithin a terr i t o ry is widely accepted, and social scien-tists even use terms like “neighbourhood tra n s i t i o n ” o rthe “browning of A m e r i c a ” to describe this.

Yet immigrants bring higher religiosity as well asethnic dive rs i t y. Many seem to find the idea of r e l i-gious populations replacing secular ones more diffi-cult to accept than ethnic change. Pa rt of this has todo with the invisibility of religious gr owth: most ofthe religious people in Europe and America are whiteChristians and their gr owth comes through slow -m oving demographic processes which are less dra-m atic than immigration. The same dynamic operat e sin the developing world, where the faster-gr ow i n greligious population is often of the same ethnic back-ground as the secular one.

In a series of c o n t r ove rsial art i c l e s, Phillip Long-man of the New America Fo u n d ation has draw nattention to the political ra m i f i c ations of r e l i g i o u sd e m ogra p hy in the US, pointing to the sizeable fer-tility adva n t age enjoyed by more religious “red”s t ates over the Democratic “bl u e ” s t at e s. As Art h u rBrooks of S y racuse Unive rsity recently wrote in theWall Street Jo u rn a l, “if you picked 100 unrelat e dp o l i t i c a l ly liberal adults at random, you would findt h at they had, between them, 147 children. If yo up i c ked 100 conservat i ve s, you would find 208 kids.T h at’s a ‘fertility gap’ of 41 per cent. Given that

about 80 per cent of people with an identifiabl ep a rty preference gr ow up to vote the same

w ay as their parents, this gap tra n s l at e sinto lots more little Rep u blicans than

little Democrats to vote in futuree l e c t i o n s. ” Many liberals challenge

this log i c. Surely many of t h echildren of the religious in theUS will become secular, as theyh ave in we s t e rn Europe fo rg e n e rat i o n s. And in Europe,religion counts for less inelections than it ever has, andC atholic Europeans fromD u blin to Barcelona are stille m b racing secularism withg u s t o. Even in the US, therehas been an appreciabl egr owth in the “no religion”

p o p u l ation over the past decadeto 14 per cent. Seizing upon this

ev i d e n c e, Pippa Norris andRonald Inglehart, two leading

political scientists, advance theargument that the world is still head-

ing in a more secular direction. Theya c c ept that the reve rse is occurring in the

s h o rt term, but claim that modern i s ation willresult in increased wealth and security in the deve l-oping world, lowering religiosity and fert i l i t y. Secu-larism will eve n t u a l ly trump religious fert i l i t y.

They have a point. Phillip Longman is correct toidentify religious fertility as important, but hasn eglected the “apostasy” side of the equation. If f e rt i l-ity is alw ays the main mechanism of social change, wewould expect much higher populations of Amish, Sev-e n t h - D ay Adve n t i s t s, Je h ovah’s Witnesses and othersects with ve ry high fert i l i t y. Yet we know that thesesects suffer ve ry high “defection” rat e s — even theM o rmons lose a higher percentage of their childrenthan most American denominat i o n s. A religious pop-u l ation is more porous than an ethnic populat i o n ,because conve rsion or abandonment of the faith cant a ke place ra p i d ly and easily. And as long as the rate ofabandonment is high enough to compensate for thereligious fertility adva n t ag e, there is no threat to sec-

24 PROSPECT November 2006

ularism. European data show that the religious havehad a demographic adva n t age over their secular coun-t e rp a rts for seve ral generat i o n s, but also that thisa d va n t age has been balanced out by the secularisat i o no f many of the children of Europe’s faithful. Bearingthis in mind, I developed a more sophisticated modelo f religious change that accounts for both religiousf e rtility and abandonment of faith in we s t e rn Europe.

I found that the classical secularisation trend doesnot work as it used to. The case of the US shedssome light on this. Much of the 20th-centurygr owth of c o n s e rvat i ve Protestant denominat i o n scould have been lost to secularism or to more libera l ,higher status sects like the Episcopalians, as conser-vat i ve Protestants became better educated, we a l t h i e rand more urban. Wh at impeded such an “assimila-t i o n ” o f c o n s e rvat i ve Protestants into more libera lt h e o l ogies was a disruption of the pat t e rn linkingsocial and religious mobility. Conservat i ve Protes-t a n t s, once content to be led by an urbane libera l -Protestant elite, became increasingly conscious oftheir group identity. They began to reject the leader-ship of l i b e ral Protestants,s t a rting in the 1920s withtheir secession from the Fe d-e ral Council of C h u r c h e s.This intensified after 1970with the so-called “culturew a rs. ” L i b e ral theolog i e sand secularism came to betypecast as the malign“ o t h e r ” against which true Christians shouldm o b i l i s e. As evangelicals gained in self-conscious-n e s s, they increasingly erected communal bound-aries—such as their own media—which could bindthe generations regardless of e d u c ation or wealth.

The value changes of 1960s America proved a high-w ater mark of c u l t u ral mobility that has been rep l a c e dby a cold war of value stasis. The pool of u n s e l f c o n-scious or moderat e ly religious people is on the wane asthe “ex t r e m e s ” o f fundamental religiosity and secular-ism gr ow. When battle lines become firm ly draw n ,potential conve rt s, like fl o ating vo t e rs, dry up. In thisc o n t ext, demogra p hy becomes more important thanp r o s e lytism. A similar process seems to be occurr i n gin Europe—as the religious become increasingly self-conscious of their unusual identity in a secular society,they become more resistant to secularisat i o n .

EU RO P E—E S P E C I A L LY we s t e rn Europe—is seenas the world leader in secular modern i s at i o n ,and is used as the model by Norris and Ingle-

h a rt for their theory of s e c u l a r i s ation. But if we s t e rnEurope really is the trend-setter for secularism, thereis a problem: secularisation appears to be losing fo r c ein its own backyard. We s t e rn Europe can broadly bedivided in two. On the one hand are Catholic countriesl i ke Spain or Ireland, where religiosity is still high—

around 60 per cent of the Irish population reg u l a r lyattend church—and secularisation (in terms of r e l i-gious beliefs and attendance) arr i ved only in the sec-ond half o f the 20th century. On the other are thel a r g e ly Protestant nations (including Britain) andC atholic Fra n c e, which secularised far earlier. But sur-vey data from 1981-2004 show that in these lat t e rn at i o n s, on ave rag e, postwar generations are nolonger becoming more secular. It seems as thoughwe s t e rn Europe, with the possible exc eption of I t a ly,will eve n t u a l ly converge towards a church at t e n d a n c erate of little more than 5 per cent. However this willmask a much larger proportion—around 50 percent—who continue to describe themselves as reli-gious and affiliate with a religious denomination.

These people, described by Grace Davie as “believ-ing without belonging, ” are seen by some as carr i e rso f a flimsy faith which will soon disappear, and whichdoesn’t affect behaviour or at t i t u d e s. But if this is thec a s e, how do we explain the fact that these non-attending believe rs have fertility behaviour muchcloser to church at t e n d e rs than to non-believe rs ?

The non-attending religiousare also significantly morel i ke ly than non-believe rs toidentify themselves as ideo-l og i c a l ly conservat i ve, eve nwhen controlling for educa-tion, wealth, age and genera-tion. The religious popula-tion has two import a n t

d e m ographic adva n t ages over its non-believ i n gc o u n t e rp a rt. First, it maintains a 15-20 per cent fer-tility lead over the non-religious. Second, religiouspeople in the childbearing 18-45 age range are dis-p r o p o rt i o n at e ly female. Offset against this is themuch younger age structure of s e c u l a r i s t s.

The pivotal question is where the balance liesb e t ween religious fertility and religious ab a n d o n m e n tin the secular cutting-edge societies of France andProtestant Europe. The population balance in thesecountries stands at roughly 53 per cent non-religiousto 47 per cent religious. My projections, based ond e m ographic differences between the populations andc u rrent pat t e rns of religious abandonment, sugg e s tt h at the secular population will continue to gr ow at ad e c e l e rating rate for three or four more decades, topeak at around 55 per cent. The proportion of s e c u l a rpeople will then begin to decline between 2035 and2045. The momentum behind secularisation in themost secular countries is a reflection of the religiousabandonment of the pre-1945 generat i o n s, whichoverwhelmed the fertility adva n t age of the faithful.The end of apostasy in more recent generations sug-gests that religious demogra p hy will begin to assertitself, resulting in a population more religious at theend of the 21st century than at its beg i n n i n g. Just asin the case of the Mormons or early Christians,

As the religious become moreconscious of their identity in asecular society, they become

m o re resistant to secularisat i o n

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d e m ogra p hy rather than mass conve rsion will be themain agent of c h a n g e.

This slow shift against secularisation would haveo n ly a ve ry gradual impact on the spirit of E u r o p e a nsociety were it not for immigration. Immigrat i o nfrom Latin America has enabled American Cat h o l i c sto gr ow despite losing far more communicants toother denominations than they get in return. InE u r o p e, immigration will similarly power the rise ofthe religious population, especially its Islamic part.

In the US, we know that the population will be lessthan 50 per cent non-Hispanic white by 2050, but it isdifficult to predict what proportion of Europe’s pop-u l ation will be of non-European descent in the future,because few European countries collect census dat aon ethnicity and religion. The occasionally cited fig-ure of 30 per cent ethnic minorities in we s t e rnEurope by 2050 is little more than an educated guess.One of the few countries to collect ethnoreligiouscensus info rm ation is Austria, where a recent projec-tion—based on a conservat i ve estimate of 2 0 , 0 0 0i m m i grants a year and various assumptions ab o u treligious abandonment and fertility—predicted thatMuslims would make up between 14 and 26 per cento f the population in 2050, up from around 4 per centt o d ay. Secularists are projected to gr ow from theirc u rrent level of 12 per cent in the same period, bu ttheir future is far less certain.

Muslim secularisation would cert a i n ly alter thispicture and fo rms a corn e rstone of the Norr i s - I n g l e-h a rt secularisation thesis. But a glance at the surve y so f ethnic minorities in Europe reveals little ev i d e n c eo f t h i s. In Britain, for instance, second-generat i o nA f r o - C a r i bbean and eastern European Christians ares u b s t a n t i a l ly less religious than their parents.Though their religiosity remains much higher thant h at of the wider population, these communities mayapproach the secular British norm and provide asource of gr owth for the non-religious populat i o n .On the other hand, for a number of reasons there isv i rt u a l ly no change in the religiosity of B a n g l a d e s h iand Pakistani Muslims between the first and secondg e n e rat i o n s. A recent study of Dutch ethnic minori-ties paints a similar picture—religious retentionamong second-generation Muslim groups but secu-l a r i s ation among Dutch-born Caribbean Christians.

The future response of Europe’s lapsed Christianp o p u l ation to the gr owth of European Islam is diffi-cult to ga u g e. Muslim gr owth may prompt a morestrident secular nationalist response, as it seems toh ave done in France and Holland, or it may lead to ar e n ewed emphasis on Christian identity (see therecent speeches of Pope Benedict). David Voas andS t eve Bruce have found evidence for the latter in the2001 British census, where the proportion of w h i t eBritish respondents describing themselves as Christ-ian (rather than “no religion”) was higher in districtswith large Muslim populat i o n s. Christian identity

does not equate to gr owing religious belief, but iteve n t u a l ly might. In ethnically divided Nort h e rn Ire-land, religious conflict fuels far higher religiosity thanin other parts of Britain. In either case, the combina-tion of a fast-gr owing Muslim community and a sta-ble or slow ly gr owing Christian population wills q u e eze the non-religious, causing a major reve rsal ofthe secularising trends of the past 50 to 100 ye a rs.

We s t e rn Europe will initially emerge as a morereligious society, but not a fundamentalist one. Eve ns o, religiosity—as belief rather than at t e n d a n c e — s i g-n i f i c a n t ly predicts a more conservat i ve ideological ori-e n t ation. Though we are unlike ly to see the rise ofevangelical Christian politics in Europe, we may finda long-term drift towards more conservat i ve socialva l u e s. European publics will become more “tra d i-t i o n a l ” on moral issues like porn ogra p hy, ab o rt i o n ,f a m i ly va l u e s, religious education and gay marr i ag e.Inter-faith co-operation between Christians and Mus-lims on these issues is hardly beyond the realm of t h ep o s s i ble since ecumenical structures are already inplace in most countries to facilitate joint plat fo rm s.The ease with which conservat i ve Protestants andt raditionalist Catholics and Jews have co-operated inthe US, and the fact that most Muslim Arabs inAmerica voted Rep u blican prior to 9/11, may be take nas ev i d e n c e. Much will depend on how these ideolog i-cal synergies are channelled by parties and electora lsystems in different countries, but by the mid-21st

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c e n t u ry, the peak of secular European politics will belong past. As in America, politicians will need to stayon the right side of religious sentiment to ensure theyare not outfl a n ked by their opponents.

O ver the longue durée, the fundamentalist compo-nent of Europe’s population may begin to increase fo rthe same demographic reasons as in America. Thed i ve rsity of religious groups in Europe will guara n-tee a sep a ration of religion and stat e, but this cannotprotect secular public policies from being eroded by acoalition of religious groups who have agreed to sub-merge their differences. Religious lobbyists couchingtheir claims in the rhetoric of r e l ativism and dive rs i t ywill ask why the secular point of v i ew on issues likeab o rtion, bl a s p h e my, porn ogra p hy and evolution isthe only one taught, aired or “respected.”

Much will depend on whether conservat i ve politicalp a rties opt for a multi-ethnic religious plat fo rm orinstead dow n p l ay religion and mobilise a white nat i o n-alist majority across the secular/religious divide. Thereligious path is curr e n t ly viewed as the more accep t-able one. For the past 20 ye a rs, the Rep u blicans havetried to unite whites and non-whites under the banner ofreligious conservatism andt raditional va l u e s. Notwith-standing the current illega li m m i gration furore in the US,the party elite will almost cer-t a i n ly continue with thisagenda. Many European con-s e rvat i ves will advo c ate a similar strat egy as the onlya c c ep t able face of c u l t u ral conservatism in an increas-i n g ly multicultural society.

DE M O G R A P H I C C U R R E N T S are carrying Europet owards a more American model of m o d e r-n i t y. They also signal that current theories of

s e c u l a r i s ation need revision. Fe rtility in the deve l o p-ing world is falling ra p i d ly due to urbanisation, bu tthe World Values Survey finds that religiosity inthese countries shows no sign of d e c l i n i n g. The reli-gious continue to have higher fertility than their sec-ular brethren in the developing world, regardless ofincome or education. Though China will probablyremain more secular than we s t e rn Europe, this isu n l i ke ly to be true of L atin America, south Asia orthe middle east. For them, modern i s ation is morel i ke ly to result in a US-style religious society.

Taking a step back from the figures reveals howthe rev i val of religiosity in the west in the 21st cen-t u ry may reconfigure the Enlightenment belief i nrational individualism. Thus far, liberal optimism hass o u n d ly defeated the nay s aye rs. Marx’s warning ofc at a c lysmic economic contradictions between capitaland labour proved as wide of the mark as Daniel Bell’sf e a rs a century later of the cultural contra d i c t i o nb e t ween workplace discipline and consumer hedo-

nism. Even rising crime rates and the breakdown ofthe traditional family do not threaten the liberal order.This brings us to Francis Fukuyama’s “end of h i s-t o ry, ” in which liberal democracy and capitalism pre-vail. The idea is premised on the superiority of we s t-e rn military technology, which enables individualisticsocieties to inoculate themselves against the challengefrom more cohesive “barbarian” o n e s. Fukuyama isright. We may suffer terrorism, but terrorists cannotbring about the collapse of our complex societies. Ye tall this assumes the demographic sustainability of l i b-e ral capitalism. If F u k u yama’s “last men” c a n n o tr eplace themselve s, they will be succeeded by thosewith a more traditional outlook.

The liberal-capitalist idea spread widely in the 19thand 20th centuries in part because it reduced mort a l i t yand freed the minds and resources of s o c i e t i e s, allow-ing them to develop the advanced technology withwhich to defeat their religious and socialist riva l s. Italso enabled the demographic expansion of the west asinfant mortality fell, prosperity resulted in earlier mar-r i age and family fo rm ation, and new lands were set-

tled. A recent study by Wa l t e rScheidel, Vegard Skirbekkand Hans-Peter Kohler show st h at wealthier (presumablymore “modern”) individualshad higher fertility than thepoor in Europe until the lat e19th century. But starting inthe late 19th century, the

a u t h o rs demonstrate that the European poor began toh ave larger families than the we a l t hy. To d ay, many ofthe demographic adva n t ages that once accrued to lib-e ralism have fallen aw ay. Mortality is largely con-quered, technology is globally diffused and the secularwest is becoming a demographic ant.

Perhaps we are entering a new stage in world his-t o ry in which the demographic fl aws in libera l i s mwill become more apparent, paving the way for ther e t u rn of a communitarian social model. This maystill leave democra c y, procedural liberalism andm i xed capitalism intact. But it will seriously chal-lenge modernism, that gr e at secular movement ofc u l t u ral individualism which swept high art and cul-ture after 1880 and percolated down the social scaleto liberalise social attitudes in the 1960s. Cultura lm o d e rnism has accompanied technological modern i-s ation in the west, while the non-we s t e rn world hasg e n e ra l ly modernised its technology rather than itsva l u e s. Daniel Bell prophesied that modern i s m ’ santinomian cultural outlook would prompt a “gr e ati n s t a u rat i o n ” o f religion as people sought spiritualsolace from the alienation of m o d e rn life. Bell has sofar been proved wrong, but history may yet vindicat ehim as we bear witness not to spiritual rev i val, but toa religious reconquista based, ironically, on the nake d lyt h i s - w o r l d ly force of d e m ogra p hy. ■

We are unlike ly to see the riseo f eva n gelical politics in

E u r o p e, but we may see a driftt owa rds conservat i ve va l u e s