There are many so-called strategies for redeeming the culture. For instance, there’s electing pro-family representatives at the state and federal levels, nominating and confirming the right kind of judges, and, of course, there’s evangelism and the ability to articulate a Christian worldview in a way that our non-Christian neighbors can understand.
And while all of these are important, there’s something else that is more likely to succeed than any of these: Frequenting your local maternity ward.
Regular “BreakPoint” listeners and readers have heard about the “birth dearth” in Europe and Japan. Low birthrates have put the future of both of these societies in doubt. Europe faces the prospect of cultural extinction by an increasingly unassimilated Muslim population. Japan, which has not only rejected large-scale immigration, but also having children, has a shrinking and aging population whose “national future” is very much in doubt.
These aren’t the only significant effects of falling birthrates. There are political and cultural consequences as well.
Phillip Longman of the New American Foundation described these effects in an USA Today op-ed titled “The Liberal Baby Bust.” In it, Longman argued that demographic trends predict “a far more conservative future.” That’s because fertility “correlates strongly with a wide range of political, cultural, and religious attitudes.”
While nearly half of Americans who attend church weekly say that they want three or more children, barely a quarter of those who seldom attend church say the same. As Longman put it, among liberals and “progressive secularists,” “childlessness and small families are increasingly the norm.” Thus, in Seattle there’s nearly 45% more dogs than children.
The result of these attitudes toward kids and culture is that “an increasing share of all children born in the world are descended from a share of the population whose conservative values have led them to raise large families.”
The result will be a “dramatic, demographically driven transformation” of American culture. “Traditional values” will “make a comeback,” if for no other reason than the alternatives are self-annihilating. The “secularists and counter-culturalists” of the future will have never been born.
And that says a lot about the sterility of the secular worldview. But while it’s gratifying to see one’s beliefs vindicated in unexpected ways, we do need to keep a few things in mind.
First, family size isn’t all that matters. After all, many of the people in prison come from larger-than-average families. The key is to replace one generation of faithful Christians with another generation of faithful Christians. Helping you do that is the very mission of “BreakPoint.”
The other thing is that our children are not a cultural strategy. Christians, on average, have bigger families because we believe that children are gifts from God — good things in themselves — and because we believe that God intended our good when He said, “Be fruitful and multiply.” That’s certainly what this father of six believes.
Still, the fact that large families have unexpected, but positive, consequences for our values and culture is a reminder that, in all of life, obeying God’s commands is always the best strategy.
(This update courtesy of the Breakpoint with Chuck Colson.)
