How fertility rates and religious adherence are connected
By / Aug 17

There has been much written lately about the declining rates of childbearing. Some argue that it is a good choice in light of economic and climate concerns, while others worry about the fact that men and women are delaying marriage and childbirth until later in life, leading to a population decline. Nowhere is this more acute than in Japan where a city of some two dozen adults have resorted to lifelike dolls as stand-ins for people because the last child born in the city was over 20 years ago. The recent COVID-19 epidemic has even contributed to what has been called a “baby bust” in the United States. This decline in births has serious implications for all areas of life, including religion.

In his new book, Faith and Fertility: The Demographic Revolution and the Transformation of World Religions, Baylor historian Philip Jenkins looks at the close connections between rates of fertility and religious adherence across the globe. His book explores the relationship between childbearing and secularization and the current ways that the religious landscape of the world is being reshaped, especially in Western Europe and North America where fertility rates have fallen precipitously in recent decades. 

In your introduction, you say that there is a direct relationship between the fertility rates of a society and its religiosity. Countries with high fertility rates also (typically) enjoy higher rates of religiosity, and vice versa. Is one feeding the other, or are these just predictors of the future?

Anyone who ever took a college course on sociology knows about debates over causation and correlation. If two things happen at the same time, does one cause the other, or are they both caused by something else altogether? Or, are they simply unconnected? What I am saying is that if you look at particular countries, or regions, that linkage between fertility rates and religiosity is very strong indeed. Moreover, sudden changes in the one trend correspond really neatly to changes in the other. In fact, as I argue, you can actually use fertility changes as a predictor of what will happen in the religiosity of a particular society, and those predictions are very likely to hold good. So is this causation or correlation? 

One problem is that the two trends happen in such short time periods — maybe five or 10 years — that it is close to impossible to decide which is cause and which effect. I think for instance of a country like Italy in the 1970s, which quite suddenly in just a few years experienced a very sharp fertility drop, and where in those same years, religious practice and commitment plunged. I can actually make a good case either way, for which trend is causing which. But in a sense, that does not really matter, because the basic linkage is so solid, and attested so widely. What we can say with high confidence is that high fertility societies are also high faith, and vice versa. When a high fertility society suddenly moves to a low fertility model — and those changes do tend to be sudden — then watch closely for the religious effects.

How do the changes in fertility and focus on child-centered families change other attitudes in the society? What are some areas of rapid shifts in public attitude that have coincided with the shift in fertility and religiosity? 

I use the example of Europe from the 1960s onward, although the changes that happened there have subsequently moved over much of the globe. When family size declines, and children are less on the scene, several things happen. Quite rapidly, people lose many of the ties that previously bound them to churches or other religious institutions. They are no longer sending children to church schools or first communion classes or bar mitzvah classes. But also, society becomes more open to arguments that separate sexuality from reproduction. In the older world, families might have listened closely to what religious institutions said about enforcing sexual morality through law, but that changes quickly. In Europe, so many of these changes have happened through referenda and public votes, rather than, as in the U.S., through judicial decisions. So, you can actually map quite revolutionary changes in public attitudes, with a new openness to contraception, divorce, abortion, and gay rights issues. 

As a result, countries that in 1960 were some of the world’s most morally conservative became some of the most liberal. At every stage, you can also link these developments to changes in fertility. As society becomes more liberal or even radical on these issues, so the churches lose ever more support as they are repeatedly depicted as the bad guys seeking to staunch progress. They face a kind of vicious circle. People are prepared to accept or tolerate the churches and clergy but only as long as they keep out of private lives. In terms of how religion has always been seen as a force in public life, that is a revolutionary development.

It is not, you argue, necessarily Marx or Freud whose work has reduced the appeal of religion, but possibly the work of Louis Pasteur and advances in medicine. Why has something like germ theory shifted our understanding of the family? 

One great force driving high fertility in past centuries was the very high death rate for babies and small children. Infant mortality rates were inconceivably dreadful, so people had to have lots of children to compensate for losses. That in turn severely constrained women’s lives. New insights about germs and infections meant that infant mortality rates fell incredibly fast, and that was the essential precondition for smaller family size. At the same time, knowing the causes of disease has massively reduced the role of clergy and churches in seeking to offer healing and protection against bodily ills. Whole areas of life have been transferred to the medical profession, which now can have a real and positive impact, which was certainly not true until the mid-19th century.

Also, higher standards of health mean that death has become a less familiar and visible part of our everyday lives, and that in turn has limited what was once one of the critical functions of clergy, namely in being present at deathbeds and funerals. Today, death is more medicalized, and is regarded as something for the very old, rather than something that can strike anyone at any time. We have had a revolution in death.

Your book deals a lot with secularization theory and the idea that religion will just generally decline and eventually disappear. However, you say that secularization is a self-limiting process. What do you mean by this?

Imagine a society that is low faith and low fertility, and as I say, the two trends go together. Societies age and become more stable. They also become more secular, and more liberal in their cultural and sexual attitudes. If those are your views, you might think that is a wonderful prospect, and we are all joining together singing John Lennon’s Imagine. But a society with a median age in the 40s — and that is much of Europe today — simply cannot survive economically. It needs people to do the working class jobs, to provide the human services, and to pay the taxes. That means drawing in immigrants, who come from young and high fertility lands in the Global South. In Western Europe, that means turning to North Africa or the Middle East, or South Asia. 

But high fertility societies are also high faith societies, and those new immigrants are likely to be strongly religious, not to mention very traditional in their morality. Many immigrants are Muslim, but plenty of others are passionately Christian. So, in that sense, a secular society will inevitably be transformed by those strictly non-secular immigrants. Over time, the immigrants will often come close to outnumbering the old-stock populations. The less religious a society is today, the more religious it will become in a generation or so.

While the secularization that you note about Europe is true, America has traditionally been a sort of outlier to the conversation because it resembles European nations in many respects but has also retained high levels of religious behavior and identity. Will that trend continue or will American begin to look more like Europe in the near future? 

The U.S. was long a problem for scholars of religion, because it was high faith and (relatively) high fertility. Some of us — including myself! — spent lots of time trying to account for this paradox. For better or worse, we no longer have to explain such things because the U.S. has now moved decisively to European levels of fertility. The big change was the economic crisis of 2007-8, which increasingly looks like a social revolution in people’s ways of life and expectations. 

Today, U.S. fertility rates track closely with those of famously low-fertility Denmark, and they may well go lower: it will be very interesting to see the long-term impact of the pandemic. And as we might have expected, low fertility rapidly implies low faith. The best evidence for this is the dramatic growth of the Nones, those who reject any religious affiliation. They already outnumber Catholics, and by 2025 should be the largest component of the U.S. population, above evangelicals.

Ronald Inglehart wrote recently that “Since 2007, the United States has showed the largest shift of any country away from religion and now ranks among the world’s least religious publics.” For anyone who recalls conditions even a decade ago, that’s amazing. So yes, I do think that “Europe awaits.”

This decline in religion though is not a complete rejection of faith. There is an increase as you note in pilgrimages to holy sites and even many of the Nones (as Ryan Burge has argued in his book on the growing religious group) display some continued adherence to religious belief. So, is this part of the larger conversation about a declining trust in institutions across culture, not just the church specifically? 

And that is an excellent point. When people talk about secularization, they often see it as the same as atheism, which it is not. When people cut loose from institutions, they often maintain the underlying codes and belief system, as in the case of the Nones. But here is the problem. If you cast off moorings from any and all churches, and live what you see as a religious life free of institutions, how long can you keep that up? Decades? A generation? And more important, is that something that can be passed on to the next generation. In Europe, it took a few decades, but those Nones gradually did turn into actual atheists, who see no reason at all for the survival of religion. I am not saying that trajectory is inevitable, but it seems like one we should be aware of.

How does the question of mass migration and immigrations contribute to this discussion? What effect does an influx of immigrants have on the religious behavior and fertility rates of a country? How do immigrants change over time in terms of childbirth and religious behavior? 

Right, I mentioned this earlier. Immigrants do tend to be younger than the historic population, because they are the sort of people who are likely to make such a dramatic move, and early on at least, they are very religious. As to what happens over two or three generations, that is a different matter. Certainly, people of migrant stock tend to move toward the norms of the host society, and their fertility rates do drop. Religion is a more complex matter. Christian migrants are a major part of church life in Europe, especially in countries like Britain, and we see a very similar pattern here in the U.S.

Muslims might tend to keep their religion even longer because it is so intimately bound up with every aspect of their lives, and their social realities. It is actually a very major and difficult step to move to be a real “ex-Muslim,” even if you abandon many aspects of the belief system.

In looking at Africa, you note that soon it will demographically lay claim to the title of the most populous Christian continent. What changes can expect to arise from this shift from Western Europe and North America to the Global South, and particularly Africa? 

Some areas of the world resist the drift to low fertility: Africa, and large portions of the Middle East and South Asia. These will increasingly dominate their respective faiths. By 2050 or so, around a third of all Christians will live on the African continent, and that does not include people of African stock living elsewhere in the world. The impact on Islam will be a bit less, because Muslim numbers are holding up very well in South Asia, but the African share will certainly grow for them too.

Common wisdom has often held that individuals go through stages of religiosity over the course of their lifetimes where they may leave in their young adult years but return when they have children. How does the shift in fertility affect that concept of the faith life cycle of individuals and their possibility of returning? How does it change the way that churches need to approach ministry and outreach in the future? 

I think about all the effort that churches put into studying and catering for children and young people, and I wonder if we are asking the wrong questions. The demographic revolution sweeping the world right now has its greatest impact on the numbers of the old and very old. Those numbers are soaring, both in absolute and relative terms. How do churches cope with them, apart from just holding helpful seminars on dying, death, and estate planning? That aging, that “graying,” poses questions that most churches have scarcely begun to contemplate. Those are some of the greatest challenges to ministry and outreach, and we scarcely have the vocabulary as yet with which to approach the problem. 

When Mother’s Day brings pain
By / May 7

Mother’s Day can be bittersweet for many. One in 10 couples struggle with infertility, and approximately 10 to 20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriages. For many women who long to have a child, Mother’s Day can serve as a difficult reminder of what they desire, but do not have. The potential pain of Mother’s Day extends further still — for women have chosen an adoption plan for their child, single women who desire to be married and have a family, or women who have had an abortion. And others might be grieving the loss of or navigating a difficult relationship with their mother.

Waiting

Personally, Mother’s Day can be filled with conflicting emotions. I was born with a somewhat rare medical condition that prevents me from bearing biological children. The loss of that dream feels especially poignant this time of year. But I also have a desire to honor my own mother and mother-in-law and celebrate the women in my life who are mothers. Romans 12:15 is often on my lips as I navigate these tensions and seek to “rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”

My husband and I are in the process of an international adoption from India. This Mother’s Day, I feel the strange tension of pursuing motherhood but not yet stepping into the role of “mother.” I’m waiting for paperwork to be approved, for a social worker to deem us eligible to be parents, and to be matched with a child. But I know that waiting is not in vain. 

As an adoptee myself, I’m aware that my children’s stories will contain trauma. Even if our children are adopted young, there is trauma involved any time there’s a break in the natural family. The issue of adoption and child welfare is deeply important to me. I’ve spent time and energy navigating the complexities of these issues in order to advocate on behalf of vulnerable children. While we wait, we are reading books on trauma-informed parenting, listening to seminars, and gleaning wisdom from other adoptive parents so that we can love our children well. Our waiting is not in vain.

Watching 

We’re also watching the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in India with broken hearts. According to the BBC, “India has seen more than 300,000 new cases a day for nearly two weeks straight while deaths stand at 220,000. Experts say total Covid cases and deaths in India are likely to be much higher, citing lack of testing and patients dying at home without being seen by doctors.” The images and stories we’re witnessing have caused global alarm and attention. I can’t help but wonder how many children will be orphaned because of the thousands of COVID-19 deaths. 

Praying 

As we watch and wait, we do the best thing we know how to do: We pray. We lift up our future children in prayer almost daily. They might not be known to us, but they are known to our Father, and in that, we take great comfort. We pray for their safety and protection. We pray for their biological parents and the challenging circumstances that led them to making an adoption plan for their children. We pray for the leaders in India to make good and wise decisions for their citizens. We pray for the souls of our children, that they might come to know the Lord as their Savior at a young age.

In my waiting, I often echo the words of David, “O my Strength, I will watch for you, for you, O God, are my fortress.” Waiting can often feel helpless, but Psalm 27:14 reminds us to “be strong, and let your heart take courage” as we “wait for the Lord.” I fix my eyes upon the Lord and ask him to fill me with his strength when I feel weak. 

If you find yourself in a season of waiting right now, allow me to remind you that you are never alone in your struggle. Psalm 38:9 reminds us that “all our longing is before God; our sighing is not hidden from Him.” The Lord promises never to leave or forsake his children. He promises to be good and to set his steadfast love upon us. When you feel overwhelmed and discouraged, on Mother’s Day or any time, press into the promises of the Lord. 

Why we should change the way we speak about miscarriage
By / Oct 13

Sitting in the exam room, my heart was shattered by the news of my miscarriage. In an effort to bring comfort, the midwife declared, “You’ll have another baby!”

I didn’t want another child, I wanted this one. The one I’d carried for nine weeks and deeply loved.

Her words haunted me as I labored our baby in the hallway of our home that night. They whispered again and again as I went on to lose two more precious babies. 

Words reveal our beliefs

Since facing recurrent miscarriages, I’ve had the opportunity to encourage other women struggling with this loss. I’ve become familiar with the comments said to those who lose babies in the womb. These comments, spoken from loved ones, church friends, and even strangers are said to comfort the sufferer, but instead leave them feeling unseen in their grief. 

More heartbreakingly, when reading between the lines, we may find underlying misunderstandings about unborn children. It’s helpful to think through what we’ve said about miscarriage in order to comfort those around us and uphold the value of life.

At least . . . 

Spoken with good intentions, comments like “at least it was early” or “at least you can get pregnant” or “at least you have children,” not only belittle the pain of a woman facing miscarriage, but unknowingly challenge the value of life in the womb. 

Though everyone grieves differently, whether a woman loses her baby at five or 20 weeks, whether she has children or not, she lost her baby. A real person—an image-bearer of God. “At least” statements are rarely helpful. Instead, let’s say “I’m so sorry for the loss of your baby.” This acknowledges the pain of the mother and the valuable life of the child.

Another baby

Just as the midwife declared I’d have another baby, many women hear the same words spoken over them. Comments like this are unhelpful because they point the sufferer to fix her eyes on the gift rather than the Giver. It’s also hurtful to women who experience recurrent pregnancy loss or face infertility after losing their baby. It’s possible she may not have another child. More than that, it diminishes the value of the life that was lost. Babies aren’t band-aids. Babies don’t replace babies. 

Instead, let’s acknowledge the loss of their child and seek to gently point their eyes to Jesus. Let’s we weep with them over the loss of their unborn baby and as the Spirit leads, share the beautiful truth of how God is near to the broken-hearted—how in grief, he gives more of himself (Psa. 34:18; 147:3). Let’s remind them that he is their Good Shepherd, walking with them down this painful path that leads to greater joy (Psa. 23). 

God protected you

I recently asked women to share comments said to them by fellow believers regarding their miscarriage. One of the most common responses was this: “God was protecting you from a baby with a disability.” How heartbreaking.

Let’s learn a better, more compassionate way of approaching pregnancy loss for the sake of our brothers and sisters in Christ and for the sake of the unborn.

Of all people, Christians should be advocating for the value of every life—including the lives of unborn babies with disabilities. Is it better that a mother would lose her baby rather than getting to know and kiss and raise her child with disabilities? What does this preach to the culture that advocates for the brutal abortion of disabled children? 

Every person, whether they have special needs or not, is fearfully and wonderfully made (Psa. 139:13-16).

The “12-Week Rule”

There’s a rule regarding pregnancy announcements that tells women to keep their pregnancy a secret until the greater risk of miscarriage passes. The purpose is to “protect” them from having to share the news of the death of their baby. 

The decision to share about your pregnancy or miscarriage is highly personal, and there isn’t a right answer. But telling a woman not to share further adds to the shame surrounding pregnancy loss. The death of a baby before 12 weeks is still the death of a baby. One that deserves to be rejoiced over and grieved as the image-bearer he or she is. 

What would it look like to unbelievers if instead of encouraging secrecy, more Christians rejoiced in a woman’s decision to share about the youngest of lives in the womb?

Cultural influences

I wonder how many of these things stem from how our culture champions abortion. As Christians, we would be wise to ponder whether or not the statements we make regarding babies lost in the womb line up with how God views them. 

Would he say, “at least it was early” or “I spared you from a child with disabilities”? Perish the thought! Every human life is a wonderful work of God, created to bring him glory, even the most fragile of lives.

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. (Psa. 139:13-14a ESV)

Grace for our lack of understanding

Before experiencing pregnancy loss, I misunderstood it. When a friend lost her baby I thought it was sad, but I viewed it as a loss of a dream, not her beloved child. I’m grieved at my indifference. Yet, there’s grace for those of us who have been insensitive or who haven’t upheld the value of the unborn as we should.

If you’re heartbroken over the way you’ve handled the suffering of your sisters in Christ or the way you’ve spoken of babies lost in the womb, bask in the grace of Christ. He’s taken upon himself all our sin and shame so that we don’t have to wallow in our mistakes (1 Pet. 2:24). 

For those who’ve been hurt by comments of others, I pray you would seek to have grace for them, with a heart of forgiveness (Col. 3:13).

Let’s learn a better, more compassionate way of approaching pregnancy loss for the sake of our brothers and sisters in Christ and for the sake of the unborn.

To the barren one on Mother’s Day
By / May 6

This Sunday, you will not be far from my thoughts, dear one.

I’ll wake early to my son’s voice, “Mommy? Moooooommmmy!” and my heart will spill over with joy as I welcome my third Mother’s Day. But mixed with that joy will be a keen awareness that you are still waiting. Longing. Aching.

With every fiber of your being you long to be a mom. You were made for motherhood, and everything within you cries out against your barrenness.

I remember.

I was 35 when I gave birth to my first (and only) child. If I’d scripted the story of my life, I would have had my first at 22 (he’d be 16 now) and at least two or three children after that. But instead, my fruitful years were spent celebrating everyone else’s babies—one birth announcement and baby shower after another. 

Whatever could I do with empty hands that were made to hold children?

God met me in my emptiness with strong words that forever changed me. He sang Isaiah 54 over my longings, and as I clung to this Scripture through those waiting years, its truths were engraved into the marrow of my soul.

Sing, O barren one, who did not bear;
break forth into singing and cry aloud,
you who have not been in labor.

For the children of the desolate one will be more
than the children of her who is married, says the Lord.

Could my childless life truly be as rich and full as my friends who had children? Could I sit through yet another baby shower or Mother’s Day assured of some glorious purpose in my pain? 

God said so, right there in the pages of Scripture—so I took him at his Word.

I poured out my life and love into my students and teenage and college-age girls. Over the course of my single years, I opened up my heart and home, discipling countless women, counseling kids in crisis and leading Bible studies where God showed up in spectacular ways.

I wasn’t always faithful to invest well, and sometimes my sorrow and longing overshadowed my ministries, but by God’s grace I began to feel the weighty truth of Isaiah 54: although I was not yet a mother, I had dozens of spiritual children. I felt rich…unspeakably, filthy rich.

But there was yet another aspect of Isaiah 54, a far scarier aspect that compelled my heart to continue hoping for children of my own. While I felt wealthy with spiritual children, the longing for marriage and motherhood wouldn’t go away. I didn’t quite know what to do with these words:

Enlarge the place of your tent,
and let the curtains of your
habitations be stretched out;
do not hold back;
lengthen your cords and
strengthen your stakes.

For you will spread abroad
to the right and to the left,
and your offspring will possess the nations…

Although God wasn’t signing on the dotted line, promising to give me my own flesh-and-blood, I wanted my heart to be full of faith that he could. I wanted to hope past the taunting tick-tock of my biological clock. I wanted to believe that with just one word he could turn my barrenness into fruitfulness as he had for Sarah, Rachel, Hannah, Ruth and Elizabeth. 

Hope is scary, but it is our lifeblood.

So I fought to cultivate hope first and foremost in him, and then a lesser hope that he would one day fulfill the longings of my heart for children.

The years passed by, and while I continued to bear spiritual children, marriage and motherhood still eluded me.

Isaiah 54 sustained me again and again:

Fear not,
for you will not be ashamed;
be not confounded,
for you will not be disgraced;

For you will forget the shame of your youth,
and the reproach of your widowhood [singleness, barrenness]
you will remember no more.

For your Maker is your Husband,
the Lord of hosts is His name…

I have a friend who waited till she was 41 to become a mother. I have other friends who continue to wait, well into their 30s, 40s and even 50s. I had a lesser wait at 35. But those lessons learned while sitting in church every Mother’s Day, as long-stemmed roses passed me by and I sat alone while seemingly every other woman stood to be appreciated—those lessons will never be forgotten. 

And so this weekend, I’m thinking of you, dear sister. Although we may never meet on this side of eternity, I’m praying that your Maker will grant you hope in himself, faith that he can do the impossible, and a quiver-full of spiritual children.

Sing, O barren one…for you are precious and fruitful and honored in his eyes.

This was originally published here.