Eric Kaufmann studies religion, fertility, and politics, and what makes him unique is that he's willing to make predictions about the future. Most sociologists, myself included, won't touch the future--being content to trying to explain what has happened. Kaufmann uses cutting edge demography analysis to compare rates of secularization vs. fertility to figure out the religious composition of Europe in the coming decades. Now, who knows if his predictions are will be correct, but you can read them here in this article.
He writes: "The pivotal question is where the balance lies between religious fertility and religious abandonment in the secular cutting-edge societies of France and Protestant Europe. The population balance in these countries stands at roughly 53 per cent non-religious to 47 per cent religious. My projections, based on demographic differences between the populations and current patterns of religious abandonment, suggest that the secular population will continue to grow at a decelerating rate for three or four more decades, to peak at around 55 per cent. The proportion of secular people will then begin to decline between 2035 and 2045."
Cool stuff...
He writes: "The pivotal question is where the balance lies between religious fertility and religious abandonment in the secular cutting-edge societies of France and Protestant Europe. The population balance in these countries stands at roughly 53 per cent non-religious to 47 per cent religious. My projections, based on demographic differences between the populations and current patterns of religious abandonment, suggest that the secular population will continue to grow at a decelerating rate for three or four more decades, to peak at around 55 per cent. The proportion of secular people will then begin to decline between 2035 and 2045."
Cool stuff...
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