Religion And Fertility

Demography drives religious change. High-fertility societies, like most of contemporary Africa, tend to be fervent and devout. The lower a population's fertility rates, the greater the tendency for people to detach from organized or institutional religion. Thus, fertility rates supply an effective gauge of secularization trends. In Fertility and Faith, Philip Jenkins maps the demographic revolution that has taken hold of many countries around the globe in recent decades and explores the implications for the future development of the world's religions. Demographic change has driven the secularization of contemporary Western Europe, where the revolution began. Jenkins shows how the European trajectory of rapid declines in fertility is now affecting much of the globe. The implications are clear: the religious character of many non-European areas is highly likely to move in the direction of sweeping secularization. And this is now reshaping the United States itself. This demographic revolution is reshaping Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism. In order to accommodate the new social trends, these religions must adapt to situations where large families are no longer the norm. Each religious tradition will develop distinctive emphases concerning morality, gender, and sexuality, as well as the roles of clergy and laity in the faith's institutional structures. Radical change follows great upheaval. The tidal shift is well underway. With Fertility and Faith, Philip Jenkins describes this ongoing phenomenon and envisions our collective religious future.

The impact of religion on family and reproduction is one of the most fascinating and complex topics open to scholarly research, but the linkage between family and religion has received no systematic comparative study. This book explores relationships between religion and demography the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The book offers a wealth of descriptive information on family life and fertility in different national and religious settings, and rich conceptual insight.

This work is a critical investigation into the relationship between religious affiliation, on the one hand, and fertility, family size preferences and family planning behaviour, on the other. Dr Chamie works from a set of unique data: the 1971 Fertility and Family Planning Survey in Lebanon. This survey is not only a national study of Lebanese fertility but also a large-scale survey (2,800 people) offering the opportunity to study Arab Christian-Muslim differentials. Lebanon's demographic situation has far greater scientific and practical importance than might be supposed from its relatively small population. From observing the important religious communities at different stages of social and economic development, Dr Chamie has thus been able to analyse the interacting effects of religion and socio-economic development on reproductive behaviour.

An examination, with feminist perspective, of Israel's fertility practices and policies surrounding abortion, family planning, in vitro fertilization and the welfare state. This book exposes the complex web of issues, actors, and power relations that shape the Israeli political agenda. At the same time, it contributes to ongoing feminist debates concerning the politics of reproduction and the role of the state in contributing to the oppression of women. Israel's commmitment to Zionist ideals and policies, its ambiguous relationship with Jewish Orthodoxy, and the intersection of the two at the level of gender relations have played a great role in determining the shape, scope,and direction of many government policies. This book explores the relationship between these three ideological and institutional forces in the context of development of fertility policy. In the process, it touches upon various points of interest, including the state's treatment of the Palestinian Arab minority and its relationship with the wider Palestinian national movement; the power relations and political agenda underlying policy-making in Israel; the development of Israeli social and political identity; and the use of gender to explain both the status of Israeli women and the overall unfolding of politics and policy-making.

Faith and Fertility is a comprehensive collection of essays by academics and faith leaders. The reader is introduced to the cultural and religious understanding of fertility as it is practised among diverse international faith traditions. Each chapter is written in an accessible style, outlining each faith's history, core beliefs and values.

This Book, Based On A Study Carried Out In The Travancore Region Of Kerala, Attempts To Explain The Differential Influeces Of Many Demographic, Developmental And Cultural Variables That Influence Social Change Among Different Religious Groups And Also Ultimately The Fertility Behaviour.

​The work investigates the impact of religiosity of women and men on their completed fertility in an international comparison considering a long time period. Sandra Hubert aims at uncovering all mechanisms through which religiosity and religious institutions can affect fertility. Hence, both the micro- and the macro-level of each country are explicitly integrated, and theoretically as well as empirically dealt with. The selection of differing countries rests upon the expectation that religiosity influences fertility decisions independently of the institutional context, social norms, state church-relations, and the national degree of religious vitality. These factors are intensively compared with each other at the country level. At the micro-level the impact of religiosity on fertility is tested by means of regressions and based on the Generations and Gender Survey. Results depend on gender, country, the diverse religious affiliations, and more.

Dawkins and Hitchens have convinced many western intellectuals that secularism is the way forward. But most people don't read their books before deciding whether to be religious. Instead, they inherit their faith from their parents, who often innoculate them against the elegant arguments of secularists. And 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. The cumulative effect of immigration from religious countries, and religious fertility will be to reverse the secularisation 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. Within Judaism, the Ultra-Orthodox may achieve majority status over their liberal counterparts by mid-century. Islamist Muslims have won the culture war in much of the Muslim world, and their success provides a glimpse of what awaits the Christian West and Israel. Based on a wealth of demographic research, 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.