Eric Kaufmann

Eric Kaufmann, a professor at Birkbeck College, University of London, using a a wealth of demographic studies argues the decline of atheism in terms of its global adherents is an established trend that will persist for the foreseeable future and the rate of decline will accelerate.

Eric Kaufmann is a professor of politics at Birkbeck, University of London. His academic research specialty is how demographic changes affect religion/irreligion and politics. He was a Fellow in the Religion in International Affairs Program, Belfer Center, Kennedy School, Harvard, 2008-9. In 2008, he won the Richard Rose Prize of the Political Studies Association for a scholar under 40.

Kaufmann is an agnostic and he is originally from Canada.

His academic work and his book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? argue using a wealth of demographic data that due to the higher birth rates of religious conservatives (and the below replacement level of the irreligious) and religious immigration to the Western World, atheism/secularism will decline in the Western World as early as 2021 or by 2050. In addition, Kaufmann has indicated that globally the religious communities of Christianity/Islam will become more theologically conservative.

Kaufmann told a secular audience in Australia: "The trends that are happening worldwide inevitably in an age of globalization are going to affect us."

Kaufmann and other scholars have noted that religious immigrants and their offspring are often very resistant to secularization and there is some social science research indicating that the children of immigrants tend to become more religious than their parents. In 2010, Kaufmann reported that the rate of secularisation flattened to zero in most of Protestant Europe and France.

Kaufmann on the culture war in America

In 2010, in his book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth, Kaufmann wrote concerning the culture war in the United States:

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High evangelical fertility rates more than compensated for losses to liberal Protestant sects during the twentieth century. In recent decades, white secularism has surged, but Latino and Asian religious immigration has taken up the slack, keeping secularism at bay. Across denominations, the fertility advantage of religious fundamentalists of all colours is significant and growing. After 2020, their demographic weight will begin to tip the balance in the culture wars towards the conservative side, ramping up pressure on hot-button issues such as abortion. By the end of the century, three quarters of America may be pro-life. Their activism will leap over the borders of the 'Redeemer Nation' to evangelize the world. Already, the rise of the World Congress of Families has launched a global religious right, its arms stretching across the bloody lines of the War on Terror to embrace the entire Abrahamic family.

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Kaufmann on the future of evangelical Protestantism in Europe

See also: Growth of evangelical Protestantism in Europe

Concerning the future of evangelical Protestantism in Europe, in a paper entitled Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century, Kaufmann wrote:

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What of European Christianity? The conventional wisdom holds it to be in free fall, especially in Western Europe. (Bruce 2002) This is undoubtedly correct for Catholic Europe, while Protestant Europe already has low levels of religious practice. Yet closer scrutiny reveals an increasingly lively and demographically growing Christian remnant. Several studies have examined the connection between religiosity - whether defined as attendance, belief or affiliation - and fertility in Europe. Most find a statistically significant effect even when controlling for age, education, income, marital status and other factors... Moving to the wider spectrum of European Christianity, we find that fertility is indeed much higher among European women who are religious... Today, most of those who remain religious in Europe wear their beliefs lightly, but conservative Christianity is hardly a spent force. Data on conservative Christians is difficult to come by since many new churches keep few official records. Reports from the World Christian Database, which meticulously tracks reports from church bodies, indicates that 4.1 percent of Europeans (including Russians) were evangelical Christians in 2005. This figure rises to 4.9 percent in northern, western and southern Europe. Most religious conservatives are charismatics, working within mainstream denominations like Catholicism or Lutheranism to ‘renew’ the faith along more conservative lines. There is also an important minority of Pentecostals, who account for .5% of Europe’s population. Together, charismatics and Pentecostals account for close to 5 % of Europe’s population. The proportion of conservative Christians has been rising, however: some estimate that the trajectory of conservative Christian growth has outpaced that of Islam in Europe. (Jenkins 2007: 75). In many European countries, the proportion of conservative Christians is close to the number who are recorded as attending church weekly. This would suggest an increasingly devout Christian remnant is emerging in western Europe which is more resistant to secularization. This shows up in France, Britain and Scandinavia (less Finland), the most secular countries where we have 1981, 1990 and 2000 EVS and 2004 ESS data on religiosity... Currently there are more evangelical Christians than Muslims in Europe. (Jenkins 2007: 75) In Eastern Europe, as outside the western world, Pentecostalism is a sociological and not a demographic phenomenon. In Western Europe, by contrast, demography is central to evangelicalism’s growth, especially in urban areas. Alas, immigration brings two foreign imports, Islam and Christianity, to secular Europe.

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Books

• Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth: Demography and Politics in the 21st Century (Profile Books, 2010)

• Co-editor, with Jack Goldstone and Monica Toft, of Political Demography: How Population Changes are Reshaping International Security and National Politics (Oxford University Press, 2012).

See also

• Global atheism

External links

• Eric Kaufmann's website
• Eric Kaufmann - Twitter
• Review: Meek or otherwise, the religious will inherit the Earth - Review of the book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

Videos:

• "Eric Kaufmann: shall the religious inherit the earth? - Festival of dangerous ideas 2010, Sydney Opera House - September 5, 2010, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
• Eric Kaufmann - Religion, Demography and Politics in the 21st Century - YouTube