Fertility and Faith

The Demographic Revolution and the Transformation of World Religions

Bibliographic Data

ID4010144
AuthorsJ Jona Schellekens (0000-0001-7950-1614, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume52
Issue1
Pages111-112
Publication date2021-06-21
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Interdisciplinary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-1953 • E-ISSN: 1530-9169
PublisherMIT Press - Journals (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1162/jinh_r_01671
OpenAlexW3173867771
LanguageEN
Citations received8

The remarkable global decline in human fertility has coincided with a move away from institutional religion. Church attendance is a strong predictor of future childbearing.1 Thus, one possible explanation for that coincidence is that secularization contributed to the decline in fertility. Previous research suggests that family formation may lead to increased religious service attendance.2 Thus, the decline in religious service attendance could also be the result of the decline in fertility. In this interesting book, Jenkins explores the second possibility. His is not the first book to do so. However, it is the first to explore the linkage on a global scale (18). It draws a convincing picture of a world in which “faith is so often bound up with fertility” (181).Social scientists will search the book in vain for empirical evidence of the contribution of family formation to the decline in institutional religion. Britain is one of the few places for which an estimate of such a contribution is available. The British data, however, do not support the claims that family formation is the main driver of the decline in church attendance. Family-formation effects there were relatively small, though they may be larger elsewhere.3 Chapter 3 presents a rare case in which trends in church attendance were reversed, as fertility rose. The “years of the mid-twentieth century baby boom were a flourishing era for religion across non-Communist Europe” (49). However, in Britain the brief postwar peak in church attendance was still a long way below percentages recorded for the 1920s and 1930s, when fertility was lower.4Additional theories in the book shy away from empirical evidence. Chapter 2, for example, includes a section about the “First Baby Bust” in the late 1920s and 1930s, offering the following explanation: “One reason for that was the strong presence of death and death rituals as a consequence of the First World War” (61). Jenkins admits that other factors were also at work. The Netherlands, for instance, was a noncombatant in World War I, but it still noted a fertility dip. Previous research has shown that prosperity explains the dip of the 1920s in the Netherlands. Without a rise in prosperity, a dip in fertility would not have occurred.5 There also was a rise in prosperity elsewhere in Europe. Thus, the strong presence of death and death rituals may have played only a marginal role in the “First Baby Bust.”The book also discusses the contribution of mortality and morbidity to institutional religion, especially in Africa. “Without the promise of healing..., the growth of African Christianity is incomprehensible” (127). Low infant mortality in combination with high fertility is responsible for the demographic growth of the Christian and Muslim populations in Africa (128–130).In the last chapter, Jenkins asks, “If in fact faith and fertility are bound together so tightly, does that mean that a world of very low fertility will also be one of low or sharply diminished religiosity?” (186). Some social scientists believe that there is a decline in actual belief rather than in just institutional structures (189). Jenkins disagrees, however, arguing that “the changes we have seen in Europe portend grim times for organized institutional faith, but not necessarily for faith itself. Religious and spiritual attitudes remain alive and even vigorous, even if they seek nontraditional channels for expression” (186)

Attendance · Church attendance · Development economics · Economics · Faith · Fertility · Geography · Political science · Population · Religiosity · Secularization · Sociology · Theology · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences · Demography · Family Dynamics and Relationships · History · Law · Philosophy

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