Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century

"Brilliant and provocative. . . .A book every liberal should read."--John Gray"Kaufmann is controversial, highly informative, and thought provoking. A not-to-be-missed contribution to one of the most pressing and complex debates of modern time."--"Morning Star"Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchen [...]
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"Brilliant and provocative. . . .A book every liberal should read."--John Gray"Kaufmann is controversial, highly informative, and thought provoking. A not-to-be-missed contribution to one of the most pressing and complex debates of modern time."--"Morning Star"Richard Dawkins and Christopher 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 inoculate 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 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.Eric Kaufmann examines the implications of the decline in liberal secularism as religious conservatism rises--and what this means for the future of western modernity.Eric Kaufmann, an American academic, is currently reader in politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. Prior to that, he was a fellow at the Belfer Center, Harvard University.