Secularism was to be the wave of the future. Leading secular theorists such as Peter Berger taught that secularism would be the inevitable result of the inexorable march of progress and that its many advantages would simply drive out religion in all of its forms. No serious discussion was possible or necessary. Religion would be deposited unceremoniously on the dustbin of history.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the dustbin: secularism has not only failed to triumph over religion, it can’t even reproduce itself.  In spite of enormous institutional advantages conferred on it by the state, the media and academia, secularism has created a society that cannot achieve replacement fertility. The most secular places tend to have the lowest fertility rates, and within countries, the most modern parts of modern societies tend to have the lowest fertility rates.  

This is highlighted in the soon to be released second part of Demographic Winter, an independent film project which features interviews with me, among other experts.

For instance, the US is alone among the modern western democracies in having fertility rates at or above replacement, and the US is widely regarded as the last remaining religious country in the industrialized world. Within the US, the New England states have among the lowest fertility rates in the US. Vermont has the lowest total fertility rate of any state in the union: 1.66 babies per woman. (Note: you have to click on the link for the excel file to see the birth rates.) While you’re looking at the table, please notice that the six New England states, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, are in the “top ten” of the lowest total fertility rate states in the country. Not surprisingly, Vermont has a low population growth rate compared with the rest of the country: Vermont’s population grew 2 per cent between 2000 and 2007, while the entire country grew by 7.2 per cent over the same period.

Citizens of Vermont also have the lowest rates of regular religious practice. In Vermont, for instance, 26% of the population considers themselves “unaffiliated” with any religious tradition, compared with 16 per cent of the US population. Even in Massachusetts, with a large percentage of nominal Catholics, a full third of the population never attends church services, while nationwide only about a quarter of the population nationwide never attends church.  Only 30% of Massachusetts residents attends church services at least once a week, compared with 39 per cent of the general US population. The other New England states have even lower rates of church attendance.

Secularism contains many disincentives for child-rearing. The most obvious is that secularism considers sex a recreational activity, with no social or moral significance, and with no necessary connection with child-rearing. People, including school children, are encouraged to act as if they have perfectly functioning contraception, with abortion available any time during pregnancy. Of course, no contraception functions perfectly. So women get themselves involved in relationships and situations that cannot possibly support a pregnancy. They naturally view these pregnancies as “unintended” and believe abortion is the only “choice.”  Under that world view, having children becomes an inconvenient “choice.”  

Operating within their world view, secularists have created a society in which sex is sterile for most people, for most of their lives, with children thrown in as an afterthought for those peculiar souls who happen to like that sort of thing. Marriage is organized around the desires of adults, not around the needs of children. The state does not recognize that children have an interest in the stability of their parents’ union.

Mothers can count on the government for a minimal level of support, but they cannot count on substantial material or emotional support from their child’s father. Poor people can obtain low quality housing subsidized by the state. But nice homes in good neighborhoods, with good schools, require two incomes. Women with high aspirations for their children do want to raise their children within a stable marriage. But the government undermines their efforts to do so, by permitting divorce for any reason or no reason. Women are expected to work throughout their lives.

By contrast, most religious traditions consider sex sacred and children a blessing. Christianity, for instance, holds that God created marriage in the Garden of Eden. Man and woman are meant for love, for union and communion with one another. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2360), “Sexuality is ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman. In marriage, the physical intimacy of the spouses becomes a sign and a pledge of spiritual communion.” Marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman of exclusive fidelity for the purpose of procreation and education of offspring and the mutual good of the spouses. People who participate in the Christian tradition believe that the connection between sex, marriage and children is ordained by God, for their good, and for the common good of society. This gives people a motivation to bear with the inconveniences associated with child-rearing.

Demographer Phillip Longman, author of The Empty Cradle, puts it well: “who are the people who are still having large families today? The stereotypical answer is poor people, or dumb people, or members of minority groups. But birth rates among American racial and ethnic minority groups are plummeting. The more accurate answer is deeply religious people.”

The claim that secularism would inevitably drive out religion always had an element of wishful thinking to it. The lofty semi-science of the “inexorable laws of history,” hid the fact that specific people embraced secularism and enacted specific policies to implement it. There was never anything particularly inevitable about it.  But now it is clear that in the absence of massive institutional support of the state, secularism does not stand a chance of competing against religion in a fair demographic fight of having and raising the next generation.

Watch the Demographic Winter Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG2IZEzUmA0

Prominent Sociologist Peter Berger Admits Secularization Theorists Got It Wrong!

"Like most other sociologists of religion of his day, he mistakenly predicted the all-encompassing secularization of the world. This he has quite humorously admitted on a number of occasions, concluding that the data in fact proves otherwise. By the late 1980s, Berger publicly recognized that religion (both old and new) was not only still prevalent, but in many cases was more vibrantly practiced than in periods in the past."

wikipedia

http://www.virginia.edu/iasc/HHR_Archives/AfterSecularization/8.12PBerger.pdf

British Freethinker Coined the Term Secularism in 1846

"The term secularism was created in 1846 by George Jacob Holyoake in order to describe "a form of opinion which concerns itself only with questions, the issues of which can be tested by the experience of this life" (English Secularism, 60). Holyoake was a leader of the English secularist and freethought movement who became famous to the wider public for his conviction under, and larger fight against, English blasphemy laws. His struggle made him a hero for English radicals of all types, even those who were not members of freethought organizations."

"Later, Holyoake explained his term more explicitly:

'Secularism is that which seeks the development of the physical, moral, and intellectual nature of man to the highest possible point, as the immediate duty of life — which inculcates the practical sufficiency of natural morality apart from Atheism, Theism or the Bible — which selects as its methods of procedure the promotion of human improvement by material means, and proposes these positive agreements as the common bond of union, to all who would regulate life by reason and ennoble it by service' (Principles of Secularism, 17)."

About.com

http://atheism.about.com/od/secularismseparation/a/HolyoakeSecular.htm

Depopulation Explosion

Remember the secular cry that traditional cultures would overpopulate and destroy the earth? Now the threat is secular cultures are depopulating at rates that may render national economies unsustainable.

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Russia - Drink of choice

“A specter is haunting Russia today. It is not the specter of Communism—that ghost has been chained in the attic of the past—but rather of depopulation—a relentless, unremitting, and perhaps unstoppable depopulation. The mass deaths associated with the Communist era may be20history, but another sort of mass death may have only just begun, as Russians practice what amounts to an ethnic self-cleansing.

“Is Russia’s post-Communist plunge in births the consequence of a “demographic shock,” or the result of what some Russian experts call a “quiet revolution” in patterns of family formation? At the moment, it is possible to see elements of both in the Russian Federation’s unfolding fertility trends. Demographic shocks tend by nature to be transient; demographic transitions or “revolutions,” considerably less so. But this much is clear: to date, no European society that has embarked upon the same demographic transition as Russia’s—declining marriage rates with rising divorce; the spread of cohabitation as alternative to marriage; delayed age at marriage and sub-replacement fertility regimens—has reverted to more “traditional” family patterns and higher levels of completed family size. There is no reason to think that in Russia it will be any different.”

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2009%20-%20Spring/full-Eberstadt.html

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Japan Grapples with an Aging and Shrinking Population

"By mid-century, the UN predicts, the population of Japan will have dropped from nearly 130 million to 100 million. This is the largest decline for any developed nation. Japan is not an aberration, but a trailblazer. How it is coping with a shrinking population is being scrutinised by other countries across Asia and Europe that have embarked on the same journey."

Most politicians are of the opinion that population decline is economically dysfunctional and needs to be corrected, even if they are not sure how. The deputy chief cabinet secretary, Haku­bun Shimomura, has pointed an accusing finger at Japanese women: if only they would “stay at home and raise their children”.

"What alarms Shimomura is that Japanese women have, on average, only 1.3 children each. Today Japan’s fertility average is lower than China’s (with an average of 1.6 children), although not quite as low as Taiwan’s (1.1 children). The corresponding figure for the UK is 1.9; while at the other end of the spectrum, women in Afghanistan, Angola and Liberia have an average of 6.8 children. Since the Japanese have one of the highest life expectancies in the world, the country is facing a withering at one end of the life cycle, but a boom at the other. By 2050, there will be more than three times as many people aged 65 or over as there will be those under 14. It is also predicted that there will be 500,000 ­people aged 100 or over."

Newstatesman.com

http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2009/03/japan-population-growth

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