Eric Kaufmann

For Kaufmann, religion can grow even in otherwise secular societies.[12] For example, in Israel, the ultra-Orthodox Jews comprised just about five percent of the nation's primary schoolchildren in 1960, but by the start of the twenty-first century, one third of Jewish first graders in Israel came from this religious sect.^[11] Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women in Israel had on average 7.5 children compared to their more mainstream counterparts with just over two in the early 2000s.^[12] In Europe, immigration from the Middle East and Africa is an engine of religious growth. Children of immigrants tend to be about as religious as their parents and consider their religion to be a marker of their ethnic identity, thereby insulating themselves from the secularizing forces of the host society. The other engine is comparatively high fertility and religious endogamy.^[12] In France, a white Catholic woman had half a child more than her secular counterparts in the early 2000s; in Spain, that number was 0.77.^[12] In the Netherlands, the youngest villages belong to Orthodox Calvinists,^[12] who comprised 7% of the Dutch population by the early 2000s.^[11] In Finland, the Laestadian Lutherans maintained a significant fertility advantage over the average Finn during the mid- to late-1980s, 5.47 compared to 1.45, despite seeing declines during the course of the twentieth century. In Austria, the number of people below the age of 15 who were Muslims rose past the 10%-mark in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In the United Kingdom, over 90% of Muslims married other Muslims by the turn of the millennium, and it is well known that children born into an interfaith marriage tend to be less religious than their parents. Interfaith marriage is in fact a vehicle of secularization.^[12] In general, European religious groups arranged in order of decreasing fertility are Muslims, practicing Christians, non-observant Christians, and the secular. In the early 2000s, European Muslims typically have two to three times more children than whites as recent immigrants from high-fertility countries. However, the Christian-Muslim fertility gap is shrinking. Ultra-Orthodox Jews comprised just 12% of the British Jewish population but three quarters of Jewish births at the start of the twenty-first century. Kaufmann projected that this group would make up the majority of Anglo-American Jews by 2050.^[11]

Similarly, he predicted that Catholicism will become the largest religion in the United States by 2040 despite considerable losses to secularization and conversion to Protestantism, thanks in no small part to the fact that Latino Catholics had a fertility rate of 2.83, compared to the national average of 2.03 in 2003.^[12] Kaufmann reported that in the United States, religious conservatism and participation play a key role in raising the relative level of fertility. Thus the more conservative of sects, such as the Mormons and conservative Protestant denominations, enjoy a total fertility advantage of at least one child over the rest of Americans. In particular, Mormons with higher levels of wealth and education tend to have more children than those who were poorer. Meanwhile, secular Americans tend to have the fewest children, 1.66 per couple on average in the 2000s, lower than any other group except Buddhists and Jews.^[11] He argued that such religious demographic changes will bring about social and political ramifications later in the century.^[12]

Kaufmann noted that as the overall fertility rate of a given society continues to decline due to the second demographic transition, the fertility advantage enjoyed by the religious, especially the most devout of factions, grows. A total fertility ratio of five to four is only a 25% advantage, whereas a ratio of three to two is a 50% advantage. He gave the Mormons in the United States as an example of a group that maintained a one-child fertility premium over the rest of society, despite seeing some declines of their own. He has argued that once a critical mass is reached, a religious group will start influencing the overall demographic trend of its society.^[11]

Political engagement

Kaufmann identifies as a liberal national conservative.^[15] He has called "woke" ideas "a battle for the foundations of our civilisation" and has expressed support for Florida governor Ron DeSantis, arguing at the 2022 British Conservative Party conference that the party should follow DeSantis's lead.^[16] For Kaufmann, although some of his educational policies "go too far", "DeSantis is the future of conservatism".^[17]

Books

Rise and Fall of Anglo-America (2004)

• Rise and Fall of Anglo-America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2004.
  ISBN 978-0674013032
  .

Here, Kaufmann offers his views on how the Anglo-Protestants, the founding stock and once dominant ethnocultural group of the United States of America, lost its status of dominance. He rejects the conventional view that this is due primarily to comparatively low fertility rates, large-scale international migration, and the growth in cultural prominence of ethnically diverse newcomers. Nor have the Anglo-Protestants maintained their dominant status by incorporating other groups of European descent into their midst, Kaufmann argues. Rather, the fall of Anglo-America is a consequence of the characteristics that have come to define this group, namely expressive individualism and egalitarianism, which are antithetical to maintaining dominance.[18]

Historically, the early Anglo-Protestant settlers in the seventeenth century were the most successful, creating numerous surviving written records and political institutions that last till this day. For this reason, they became the dominant group, culturally, economically, and politically, and they maintained their dominance till the early twentieth century. Commitment to the ideals of the Enlightenment meant that they sought to assimilate newcomers from outside of the British Isles, but few were interested in adopting a pan-European identity for the nation, much less turning it into a global melting pot. But in the early 1900s, liberal progressives and modernists began promoting more inclusive ideals for what the national identity of the United States should be. While the more traditionalist segments of society continued to maintain their Anglo-Protestant ethnocultural traditions, universalism and cosmopolitanism started gaining favor among the elites. These ideals became institutionalized after the Second World War, and ethnic minorities started to gain rough institutional parity with the once dominant Anglo-Protestants.^[18]

Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? (2010)

• Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century. Profile, 2010.
  ISBN 978-1846681448

In this 2010 book, Kaufmann argued that the answer to the question raised in the title is in the affirmative because demographic realities pose real challenges to the assumption of the inevitability of secular and liberal progress. He observed that devout factions tend to have a significant fertility advantage over their more moderate counterparts and the non-religious. For instance, white Catholic women in France have on average half a child more than their white secular counterparts while the Amish in the United States have three to four times more children than their fellow Christians on average. Highly religious groups tend to isolate themselves from the secularizing effects of modern mainstream Western society, making it more likely that the children will retain their parents' faiths. At the same time, secular people generally have rather low fertility rates by comparison for a variety of reasons, such as materialism, individualism, the preference for the here and now, feminism, environmentalism, or general pessimism. Kaufmann projected that secularism will have a mixed future in Europe. It will remain strong in most Catholic countries, notably Ireland and Spain, but has essentially ground to a halt in Protestant Europe and in France, and will falter in Northwestern Europe by mid-century. He told Mercator Net that the only way to buckle the trend involves "a creed that touches the emotional registers", which "can lure away the children of fundamentalists" and "a repudiation of multiculturalism." He suggested that "secular nationalism" and moderate religion associated with the nation-state could be part of the mix, but these traditions have been losing support at a considerable rate.[19]

He observed that moderate faith of the Abrahamic variety is under pressure from both secularists and fundamentalists as they find themselves living in the secularizing societies of the West.^[20] If it were only true that the religious were having more children than secular people, Kaufmann argues that the effects of the incoming demographic transformation would only be national, but because those who are having the most children tend to be intensely religious, he predicted that there would also be ramifications for international relations. However, Kaufmann rejected the increasingly popular notion that Islam will become the dominant religion in Europe by the end of the twenty-first century. Rather, Muslims would stabilize at around a fifth of the European population by 2100.^[21]

Whiteshift (2018)

• ISBN 978-1468316971