fertility

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#DUH -- Church of Rome is not the only global flock wrestling with same-sex blessings

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#DUH -- Church of Rome is not the only global flock wrestling with same-sex blessings

Bishop Martin Mtumbuka of Malawi pulled no punches when passing judgement on the Vatican's stunning declaration that Catholic clergy could bless couples living in "irregular relationships," such as same-sex unions.

This "looks to us like a heresy, it reads like a heresy, and it affects heresy," he said. "We cannot allow such an offensive and apparently blasphemous declaration to be implemented in our dioceses" in southeast Africa.

The Fiducia Supplicans ("Supplicating Trust") document triggered debates around the world, but negative reactions have been especially strong in Africa, with strong protests from bishops' conferences in Malawi, Zambia, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Angola and other nations.

"The Church of Africa is the voice of the poor, the simple and the small," wrote Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, the former head of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. "It has the task of announcing the Word of God in front of Western Christians who, because they are rich, equipped with multiple skills in philosophy, theological, biblical and canonical sciences, believe they are evolved, modern and wise in the wisdom of the world."

Cardinal Sarah endorsed the declarations from African bishops and added: "We must encourage other national or regional bishops' conferences and every bishop to do the same. By doing so, we are not opposing Pope Francis, but we are firmly and radically opposing a heresy that seriously undermines the Church, the Body of Christ, because it is contrary to the Catholic faith and Tradition."

These tensions resemble doctrinal fault lines seen during the 2015 Synod of Bishops on the Family, noted historian Philip Jenkins, the author of "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity" and "Fertility and Faith: The Demographic Revolution and the Transformation of World Religions" and many other books.

"Religious faith and fertility are linked and it's easy to see that around the world," said Jenkins, reached by Zoom.


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Podcast: Yes, churches in Africa are 'growing,' but what what does 'growing' mean?

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Podcast: Yes, churches in Africa are 'growing,' but what what does 'growing' mean?

I realize that I have used this Anglican-wars anecdote before on this website. But, hey, GetReligion is closing its doors in a few weeks and this will almost certainly be my last chance to use it here.

To be honest, this parable from the Rt. Rev. C. FitzSimons Allison of South Carolina — an evangelical Anglican scholar who is now in his mid-90s — was the perfect way to summarize the issues covered during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

Host Todd Wilken and I were discussing two important news reports about the escalating Catholic doctrinal wars about same-sex blessings, and this pulled us back to some themes from our top stories of 2023 podcast. One of the new stories was from The New York Times (“Blessing of Same-Sex Couples Rankles Africa’s Catholics”) and the other from the Associated Press (“How to deal with same-sex unions? It’s a question fracturing major Christian denominations”).

Like I said, these were must-read reports, but there were “ghosts” in them worth exploring. This brings us to the aforementioned Allison anecdote from several decades ago:

Needless to say, [Allison] has witnessed more than his share of Anglican debates about the future of the Anglican Communion, a communion in which national churches are in rapid decline in rich, powerful lands like the United States, Canada and England, but exploding with growth in the Global South.

During one global meeting, Allison watched a symbolic collision between these two worlds. Bishops from North America and their allies were talking about moving forward, making doctrinal changes in order to embrace the cultural revolutions in their lands. They were sure that Anglicans needed to evolve, or die.

Finally, a frustrated African bishop asked three questions: “Where are your children? Where are your converts? Where are your priests?”

The big question: What does it mean when journalists say that a church or religious movement is “growing”?

Usually, this is a reference to mere membership statistics. But notice that this is not how that African bishop defined church life in his growing corner of the Anglican world.


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Thinking about a sort of 'religious' question: Why do atheists have so few children?

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Thinking about a sort of 'religious' question: Why do atheists have so few children?

One thing I love about studying religion is that it impacts every aspect of social life. How people vote, where they live, what kind of jobs they pursue, are influenced in some way by their religious beliefs and behaviors.

One choice that is clearly shaped by religion is when (and if) adults have children and how large they want their families to be.

In the United States, the fertility rate in 2008 was 2.06 children per woman. In 2023, it’s projected to be 1.78 children per woman. Forty-nine out of 50 states had a lower fertility rate in 2020 compared to 2010 (North Dakota was the only one to buck the trend.)

Obviously, there are a ton of factors that lead to a drop in fertility. Economics is usually considered to be a leading culprit for a drop in fertility. The Great Recession is supposed to lead to an enrollment cliff in higher education in the next five years because people decided to delay pregnancy.

But here’s another explanation that may be playing a noticeable role in the drop in American fertility: the increasing secularization of the United States.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam all encourage their adherents to marry and have children. But lots of Americans don’t adhere to those faiths anymore. I wrote an entire book (actually two of them) about the rising number of Americans who reject religion entirely or, at least, organized forms of faith.

Does this actually matter, though? Do we see in the data a difference in parenting rates for atheists compared to Latter-day Saints, for instance?


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News hooks abound: How will religious faith shape the 'birth dearth,' and vice versa?

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News hooks abound: How will religious faith shape the 'birth dearth,' and vice versa?

Two January headlines a week apart signal that the past generation’s “population explosion” worries have reversed.

Observers fretted as China announced its population began to shrink last year as its birth rate reached a record low. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned parliament that a declining birth rate means the rapidly aging nation is “on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society.”

Then last Saturday a New York Times op-ed asserted that unfair burdens on wives and mothers created a “birth strike” and “marriage strike” that are “killing South Korea.” The nation has posted the world’s lowest fertility rate the past three years and deaths now outnumber births.

Such realities provoked the ever-interesting Times columnist Ross Douthat to ask whether “the defining challenge of the 21st Century” will be climate change decried by so many analysts or, instead, the globe’s accumulating “birth dearth” a.k.a. “baby bust” or “population implosion.”

The second trend could well undercut societies’ “dynamism and innovation” and pit “a swollen retired population” against the “overburdened young,” he warned, while listing geopolitical factors in the coming “age of demographic decadence.”

Attention newsroom managers: This is an apt time for media to consider U.S.-focused big-think pieces on how religious communities are shaping population trends and, vice versa, how those trends affect religion.

Pro-procreation government programs appear to have limited impact in boosting birth rates, which instead reflect cultural values regarding marriage and children, and complex individual decision-making. . Articles might examine related abortion policy.

Traditionally, all religions cherish children and favor reproduction, notably in the case of the Catholic Church, as The Guy discussed here a year ago (though today there’s little difference in fertility between U.S. Catholics and Protestants). On the other side of that equation, there’s universal acknowledgment that married couples raising children have been a pivotal constituency drawn to religious involvement.


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Will religious groups face questions linked to America's declining marriage stats? (Part II)

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Will religious groups face questions linked to America's declining marriage stats? (Part II)

It's a message young people in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hear early and often: You should get married, because marriage is wonderful and family life is at the heart of the faith.

The problem is that church leaders haven't grasped the power of cultural trends in technology, education and economics that are fueling sharp declines in statistics linked to dating, marriage and fertility, said Brian Willoughby of the Brigham Young University School of Family Life.

"The key word is 'tension,' " he said. Among the Latter-day Saints, these numbers are "not falling as fast" as in other groups, "but our young people are feeling tensions between the patterns they see all around them and what they hear from their parents and religious leaders.

“We are seeing the same changes -- only moving slower. The average age of people getting married is rising. Fertility rates are declining. … We can no longer assume that religious young people are some kind of different species."

It's urgent, he added, for congregations to "start making a more explicit case for marriage and family. Our young people know that marriage is important, but they don't know specific reasons for WHY it's important."

The result is what some researchers call the "marriage paradox." Young people continue to express a strong desire to "get married at some point," but they place an even higher priority on other "life goals," said Willoughby.

"Marriage becomes a transition in which they fear they will lose freedom or success. … They hear everyone saying: 'You go to these schools and get these degrees. You get job one that leads to job two. Don't let anything get in your way or get you off track.' With this kind of head-down approach, serious relationships can be a distraction on the path to success. … The heart isn't as important."

Thus, marriage isn't disappearing, but the population of young adults choosing marriage is shrinking -- especially among those with little or no commitment to religious life.


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Faith, family, dating and the looming marriage crisis in America (Part I)

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Faith, family, dating and the looming marriage crisis in America (Part I)

For decades, viewers have enjoyed the Japanese reality-TV series "Old Enough!" in which preschool children venture into the streets alone to run errands for their parents.

What if American women asked their live-in boyfriends to stop playing videogames, leave their couches and run errands? In the Saturday Night Life sketch "Old Enough! Longterm Boyfriends!" guest host Selena Gomez asked her helpless boyfriend of three years, played by cast member Mikey Day, to buy her eyeliner and two shallots.

This man-baby ends up in tears with a big bag of onions and "a blush palette for African-American women." The frustrated girlfriend says she may need a mid-morning glass of wine.

There was wisdom in that comedy, for pastors willing to see it, said sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

"There's a whole class of young men who are not flourishing personally and professionally. … The systems have broken down that help raise up attractive, successful men. Churches used to be one of those support systems," he said, reached by telephone.

"The future of the church runs through solid marriages and happy families. The churches that find ways to help men and women prepare for marriage and then encourage them to start families are the churches that will have a future."

The crisis is larger than lonely, under-employed and Internet-addicted men. Rising numbers of young women are anxious, depressed and even choosing self-harm and suicide.

The coronavirus pandemic made things worse, but researchers were already seeing danger signs, noted San Diego State psychology professor Jean Twenge, in a recent Institute for Family Studies essay.


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Elite American super-cities are bleeding people: Any religion ghosts in this big story?

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Elite American super-cities are bleeding people: Any religion ghosts in this big story?

It’s hard to imagine any corner of American life that has not been touched by the coronavirus pandemic.

Obviously, there have been plenty of religion stories — along with the obvious angles linked to politics, business and technology.

Then you have stories that combine all of these elements. That is, they combine all of these themes if reporters are willing to look at the numbers and trends through multiple lens. However, as any GetReligion reader knows, not all lens are created equal.

One of the most important stories has been the impact of COVID-19 realities on some of the most important zip codes — “important” from an elite-news perspective — on the blue coasts. That brings us to that massive headline the other day in The New York Times, a paper that has, for the most part, treated evidence of New York City woes as part of a vast a right-wing conspiracy theory. Here’s that double-decker headline:

Cities Lost Population in 2021, Leading to the Slowest Year of Growth in U.S. History

Although some of the fastest growing regions in the country continued to grow, the gains were nearly erased by stark losses in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

This is, of course, an almost totally religion-free story. I was pleased to notice that the Times team took demographic issues — including birth-rate slumps — rather seriously, even if the editors didn’t (as usual) connect the dots and see the religious, cultural and moral elements of that important angle (please see this earlier GetReligion piece — “New York Times asks this faith-free question: Why are young Americans having fewer babies?” — for background).

Am I arguing that the flight from several important American super-cities is essentially a religion story? Of course not. Am I saying that issues linked to faith, family and culture are playing a role in this very, very important story? Yes, I am.


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Looking for signs of life? Study the birth rates among religious faiths in America

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Looking for signs of life? Study the birth rates among religious faiths in America

A team of economists from Wellesley College and the University of Maryland recently published a working paper that focused on a peculiar puzzle facing the United States: declining birth rates.

More particularly, the team of researchers was trying to understand why birth rates continued to fall even after the economy was recovering from the Great Recession of 2007. Those economists concluded that one of the biggest factors was shifting priorities among younger Americans — away from raising children and toward career and travel aspirations.

But fertility is obviously incredibly multifaceted. The decision to become a parent is often one that is made with a number of factors in mind. Young adults have to consider their educational plans, the amount of income they would have available to pay for a child and how to handle childcare responsibilities once they become parents.

One factor that can have a tremendous impact on this decision is religion.

Every major religious tradition on Earth encourages reproduction, and thus there can be a theological nudge for people to have children. But a local religious community can also make the decision easier for potential parents by offering up a safety net that can provide financial support or easy access to caregivers for babies and children in the congregation.

Clearly, it’s in the best interest of religious groups to encourage their young families to have children if they want to ensure the long-term viability of their traditions. It’s no secret that families with children are the easiest pathway to ensure that a church, mosque or synagogue will be able to sustain itself for decades to come. But which traditions are doing a good job of having children, and which ones aren’t? And what does that tell us about the future of American religion?


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New podcast: New York Times still ignoring religion ghosts in 'demographic winter' trends

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New podcast: New York Times still ignoring religion ghosts in 'demographic winter' trends

I could, without breaking a sweat, create a list of important religion-beat news stories that are, to some degree or another, connected to the sinking birth rates in the Unites States and around the world.

Clashes between Chinese leaders and Muslims inside their borders? Decades of declining numbers of men seeking Catholic priesthood? The sharp decline in the power of “mainline” Protestant churches? American political clashes between red-zip code and blue-zip code regions, usually seen as tensions between rural and urban life. Tensions between Orthodox and progressive Jews. Soaring numbers linked to anxiety and loneliness. And so forth and so on.

So when I saw this headline in The New York Times — “Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications“ — I immediately thought to myself, “Here we go again.” I also figured that this would be the topic for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

Sure enough, this new feature was the global version of a Times story several years ago that led to a GetReligion post with this headline: “New York Times asks this faith-free question: Why are young Americans having fewer babies?” As I wrote at that time:

In a graphic that ran with the piece, here are the most common answers cited, listed from the highest percentages to lowest. That would be, "Want leisure time," "Haven't found partner," "Can't afford child care," "No desire for children," "Can't afford a house," "Not sure I'd be a good parent," “Worried about the economy," "Worried about global instability," "Career is a greater priority," "Work too much," "Worried about population growth," "Too much student debt," etc., etc. Climate change is near the bottom.

The economic and cultural trends are all valid, of course. But they also point toward changes in how modern people in modern economies define and look for “meaning in life” and the beliefs that define those choices.

Think birth, marriage, vocation, death. We are talking about topics that, for several billion people on this planet, are linked to religious faith.

So what did the Times have to say?


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