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“What no one has noticed is that far from declining, the religious are expanding their share of the population: in fact, the more religious people are, the more children they have,” Kaufmann says in Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? (Profile Books).

“The cumulative effect of immigration from religious countries, and religious fertility will be to reverse the secularization process in the West. Not only will the religious eventually triumph over the non-religious, but it is those who are the most extreme in their beliefs who have the largest families.”

Even while some critics have suggested Kaufmann’s projections are too adventurous and that he ignores the existential benefits of being part of a religious community or having a transcendent world view, his long-range demographic study is powerful.

He particularly punctures one liberal, secular platitude. Kaufmann’s data shows that conservative religious people do not necessarily have fewer children as they become more educated and urban.

“The World Values Survey results reveal that a woman’s religiosity is almost as important as her education in predicting how many children she has,” he says. “In some countries it is more important. Young, well-educated urban women who are religious have significantly higher birthrates than young, well-educated urban women who are not religious.”

Kaufmann also emphasizes the coupling of conservative religiosity and fertility is rapidly becoming a First World issue.

The swift rise of ultra-Orthodox Jews also dramatically demonstrates Kaufmann’s thesis.

In a New York Times analysis last month headlined “Are liberal Jewish voters a thing of the past?” Joseph Berger wrote that 60 per cent of Jewish children in New York City — the heart of American Jewry — are now orthodox Jews, many of them ultra-Orthodox Hasidim.

While the overall U.S. Jewish population, which tends to vote Democrat, has a birthrate of just 1.43 children per women, patriarchal ultra-Orthodox Jews believe they are required by God to “go forth and multiply.” Their birthrate is six to seven babies per woman.

A similar shift is occurring in Israel.

“The ultra-Orthodox are reshaping the soul of Israel and driving its population ever upward. In 1960, they formed just three per cent of the country’s Jewish first-grade class. Now they represent a third of pupils,” Kaufmann says.
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For one thing, Orthodox Jews in the U.S. tend to vote Republican rather than Democrat.

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Young, well-educated urban women who are religious have significantly higher birthrates than young, well-educated urban women who are not religious.