Enough with U.S. politics and punditry. How about more news-media reportage on major developments abroad?

One top hot spot in the coming Joe Biden era is Iran, with the regime's intensified rivalry with Arab neighbors led by Saudi Arabia, ongoing hatred toward a supposedly satanic United States and ambitious pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Journalists give far less notice to Iran's religious situation, perhaps because they tend to emphasize Islam's dominant Sunni branch more than the minority Shi'ism that became Persia's official faith in 1501, and because we assume rigid theocracy is frozen in place and that's that. 

But what if the religo-political rule so famously imposed in 1979 upon this large and pivotal land has lost so much public respect that we see "the near collapse of official Iranian Islam"? That startling quote comes from Baylor University historian Philip Jenkins in a column for The Christian Century. If true, that's a huge story just waiting for thorough examination through interviews with stateside experts or, for media so equipped, on-the-ground coverage. 

The new edition of the authoritative World Christian Encyclopedia says its sources report that starting around 2002, Iran's Islamic rule has inspired the quiet spread of small underground Christian fellowships with thousands involved -- some say a million -- despite the fact that those forsaking Islam face prison, even death. This has been discussed in niche Christian circles online, but that’s about it.

Jenkins is iffy on the extent of Christian growth, since hard evidence is lacking, but is confident about Islam's collapse due to an important opinion survey in Iran last summer by a Dutch organization.

What is happening? Only 78% of the Iranians sampled believe in God in any sense, and just 32% consider themselves to be Shi'a Muslims any longer. A mere one-fourth expect the coming Imam Mahdi (messiah), a fundamental tenet of Shi'ism. 

"The vast majority of mosques are all but abandoned, even during great celebrations" on the Islamic calendar, Jenkins reports.

His sardonic comment:  "Forty years of ruthless theocracy will do that to a country." In the vacuum there has been an upsurge of individualistic or non-orthodox spiritual ideas and practices (think “nones” in Iran), and revival for the personalized spirituality in Islam's Sufi movement, as well as secretive Christian outreach. 

Experts on Iran include a scholar in France, Laurence Louer, with her latest work "Sunnis and Shi'a: A Political History."  A review by Arizona State University's Karen Taliaferro (Karen.Taliaferro@asu.edu and 480-965-7513) says Louer's "tired pattern" seen in the social sciences means that "when motives are mixed between religion and politics, religion is always the tool of politics. But how do we know it is not the other way around?" 

Writers who plan comprehensive articles would benefit from background in the updated 2003 edition of "Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution" by MIT anthropologist Michael M.J. Fischer, which is on sale at low price or should be available in a well-stocked library. Drawing upon his own extensive field work there, Fischer (mfischer@mit.edu) covered the evolution over centuries into the consolidation of Islamist rule. 

Another specialist is Tehran native Abbas Amanat at Yale University (abbas.amanat@yale.edu and 203-432-1368), author of the 2017 work "Iran: A Modern History." Christian experts include J. Dudley Woodberry of Fuller Theological Seminary's School of Intercultural Studies, a one-time missionary in Muslim countries. (Dudley@fuller.edu and 626-584-5265).  

Jenkins asserts that the decline shown in the Iran survey data is corroborated by the nation's fertility rate, a much-observed indicator of religious devotion (see tmatt’s interview with Jenkins on this topic). As of 1982, a typical Iranian woman had 6.5 childbirths over a lifetime. Today the number has plummeted to l.7, far short of what's needed for population replacement and lower even than in Denmark.

A somewhat related story theme to consider is "The Future of Christian Marriage," the title of a gloomy new assessment by Mark Regnerus (regnerus@prc.utexas.edu or 512-232-6307 or 512-368-4213), a University of Texas sociologist who specializes in trends linked to family life. As National Review summarizes his findings, Christian young adults "have a sense of swimming upstream in their efforts to marry and form families … from Warsaw to Lagos to the suburbs of Austin, Texas."