E ric K aufmann : Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty‐First Century

Abstract

on political demography – the politics of population change. Based on a wealth of demographic research, Kaufmann shows that the more religious people are, regardless of income, faith tradition or education, the more children they have. Religious countries have faster population growth than secular ones which is why immigrants are typically much more religious than their secular host societies. The cumulative effect of immigration and religious fertility is to slow or reverse the secularisation process in the West. Within faiths, those who are fundamentalist – rather than traditional or liberal – in their beliefs have the largest families and tend to lose the fewest members to nonreligion. Among Jews, the Ultra-Orthodox may achieve majority status over their liberal counterparts by mid-century. Evangelical and neo-traditional Christians are eclipsing mainline Christianity in the United States and Europe. Islamist Muslims have won the culture war in much of the Muslim world, even as the Arab Spring has reconfigured power in the region. Drawing on extensive demographic research, and considering questions of multiculturalism and terrorism, Kaufmann examines the implications of the decline in liberal secularism as religious conservatism rises – and what this means for the future of western modernity. A number of the most prominent recorded events for the book are featured below.