Fertility & fidelity, marriage & congregations

David P. Goldman on marriage, reproduction and the survival of civilizations:

Marriage as an institution that fulfills our nature: It is a holy estate that permits the mating pair of humans to embed their reproductive activity in the eschatological hope of their faith community. The propagation of the species in its animal characteristics is united with the continuity of the people of God. If, as observation seems to confirm, the willingness of humans to form mating pairs and to bear offspring depends in the first instance on eschatological hope, then it is marriage as a sacred institution that makes possible the perpetuation of human life.

[snip

This may be the first time in Western history in which the sacred foundation of society, whose irreducible fundamental unit is the family, faces explicit opposition. If militant secularism succeeds in banishing the sacred from social life, we will lose heart and perish, as the tragic victims of communism are perishing. There is nothing to be done for the infertile, aging peoples of the former Soviet empire. The best thing one can do for them is not to be like them. Secular Western Europe already has one foot in the demographic grave. If we lose the sacred in the United States, we will follow them into Sheol. We might as well make a stand now over the sacred character of marriage, because there is nowhere to fall back from here.

You might be thinking: What about Islamic Iran? If religious fervor is associated with fertility, wouldn't we expect the Iranian birth rate to be high? Actually, as Goldman has written often, it's cratering -- and that's but one sign of the country's spiritual decadence, despite official proclamations of pietistic vigor. Nevertheless, fertility rates are collapsing globally, even in societies that are more overtly religious. Why? You could say that this invalidates, or at least undermines, the idea that religious faith is meaningfully connected to childbearing. Or you might say that it tells us something about the degree or quality of religious faith within societies. Philip Longman, the progressive thinker who writes with concern about population decline from a left-wing point of view, suggests in his Christianity Today interview (read the whole thing here) that that might be in the offing. Excerpt:

The high incidence of childless and single-child families in the West has one big implication many overlook. It means a very large proportion of the children that are being born are being produced by a small subset of the current population. And who are the people who are still having large families today?

The stereotypical answer is poor people, or dumb people, or members of minority groups. But birth rates among American racial and ethnic minority groups are plummeting. The more accurate answer is deeply religious people.

To be sure, religious fundamentalists of all varieties are themselves having fewer children than in the past. But whether they be Mormons, Orthodox Jews, or Islamic or Christian fundamentalists, devout member of these Abrahamic religions have on average far larger families than do the secular elements within their society.

In Europe, for example, the fertility differential between believers and nonbelievers has recently been estimated at 15-20 percent. Though children born into religious families often do not become religious themselves, many do, especially if they themselves go on to have children. Meanwhile, of course, the childless stand no chance of passing along their values to their progeny.

The faithful thus begin to inherit society by default. The West's total population may fall or stagnate, perhaps for quite awhile; but those who remain will be disproportionately committed to God and family, whether they be Christians, Muslims, Jews, or members of new pro-natal faiths. Let us just hope that this new age of faith will also be an age of peace.

Maybe. I'm sure Longman knows a lot more about the facts and figures than I do, but I know a number of families who are serious about their faith, and who do more than just talk about it. Yet they don't seem to be having any more kids than anybody else. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that the future will belong to members of religious groups who explicitly connect fertility to fidelity.

David's point about marriages needing to take place before a congregation is a point that deserves dwelling on. It has a Benedict Option connotation, as Sally Thomas, who used to comment often on this blog (I miss her), observes in the combox under David's essay. Excerpt:

I'm not sure that you can very successfully argue a fundamentally religious position to a secular society. One more reason to have children: to create at least a small-scale culture to which these understandings will make some sense. One more reason to be a part of a congregation: to increase the chances of your children's finding someone to marry who will share these understandings and want to have children to perpetuate them.

And "congregation" is important, even above "community" (or "village," a term I think I'm coming to loathe). In a congregation you have the figure of a marriage: a conjoining of God with His people. When people marry before a congregation, they have that figure before them, with the expectation that the marriage will reflect and embody it. Community, on the other hand, is grounded in human relationship and on expediency of one kind or another, and has largely supplanted the congregation as the default figure for marriage, which is kind of the problem.