Growing birth-rates among religious believers, and falling birthrates among secular couples are set to dramatically 
shift the political and demographic make-up of the West, a leading academic claims.
Eric Kaufmann, author of “Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the 21st Century” says that “secular populations are static and heading for decline”. Religious populations, however, are multiplying, he says. A major reason for this, Kaufmann argues, is that “the more religious people are, the more children they will have”.
And those with particularly strong beliefs “are breeding faster than anyone,” he adds.
This is set to have political implications, Kaufmann says, as believers unite to fight against the liberal agenda on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.
For example, he argues that the once small ultra-Orthodox Jewish community will make up the majority of Jews both in Israel and the diaspora between 2050 and 2100. In 1960, just a few per cent of the Jewish population of Israel studied in ultra-Orthodox primary schools. In 2012, a third of Jewish children between seven and eight will do so.
Kaufmann also points out that evangelical Protestants in the US have doubled their share of the white Protestant population during the 20th century, mostly through population growth rather than conversion.
And he says that, overall, religious women have above-replacement fertility, while overall non-religous women tend to have below replacement fertility. Figures suggest that, in spite of the secularisation of the young, the proportion of non-religious Americans is projected to peak at 17 per cent soon after 2050, much earlier in the major cities, because of low secular fertility and and religious immigration.
Other demographic effects are also set to change the make up of Western society, he adds. Religions which are more “fundamentalist”, he says, tend to lose fewer children to secular society, and as they become better organised and more technologically savvy, their retention rates have grown.
Meanwhile, other demographic factors are also set to contribute to this trend in the West. Poor immigrants, Kaufman points out, tend to be more religious. In addition, he argues, while Christian church attendance has declined by 40 per cent in the UK outside London, in the capital, it has remained stable, because most of London’s practicing Christians are non-white, and many others are white immigrants.
Also identity politics is protecting religious retention rates; for example, under 10 per cent of European Muslims marry outside the faith.