The springboard for this wide‐ranging examination of connections between religion and demography by Philip Jenkins, a comparative religion scholar, is a simple empirical association: “High‐fertility societies … tend to be fervent, devout, and religiously enthusiastic. Conversely, the lower the fertility rate … the greater the tendency to detach from organized or institutional religion. Fertility rates provide an effective gauge for religious behavior and commitment” (p. 3). Jenkins acknowledges that the causation that generates this correlation probably runs in both directions, or it may be the product of joint causation by other factors. But his emphasis in this volume, and its contribution, is fertility as a determinant of religiosity. Jenkins attributes this to fertility's impact on gender roles, sexuality, and societal age structure. A further overarching factor is security: the insecurity that is ubiquitous in pre‐transition low‐income societies largely disappears in affluent low‐mortality contemporary societies, undermining traditional religious belief and practice as more personalized non‐religious quests for meaning come to dominate. Following a first chapter that lays out his argument in brief, Jenkins devotes two chapters to the decline of fertility in Europe from the nineteenth century to the present and its various effects on religious beliefs and practice. Chapter 4 considers the decline of fertility in Asia and Latin America that occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century, with concomitant changes in religiosity (diverse in both regions). Chapter 5 examines the United States, sometimes characterized as exceptional with respect to the fertility–religiosity association; Jenkins argues that it is not so exceptional after all. Chapters 6–8 are devoted to Sub‐Saharan Africa and the Islamic world, where the remaining high fertility and religiously fundamentalist societies are now situated. Chapter 7 highlights heterogeneity in fertility within the Islamic world, with low‐fertility Iran epitomizing one nexus of contemporary Islam and fertility. A theme running throughout the volume is that international migration, especially from high fertility more religious countries to low fertility secular countries, complicates the demography and religiosity of both sending and receiving countries, generating significant political repercussions. In the concluding chapter, Jenkins speculates on the implications of fertility–religiosity connections for the future of both phenomena, emphasizing implications for the “future of faith” of a demographically post‐transitional world. Jenkins suggests that low fertility compels the major religions to develop new approaches to sexuality, gender, and family, in the process revising ethical systems in an effort to adapt to present demographic realities.

比较宗教学者菲利普·詹金斯（Philip Jenkins）对宗教与人口统计学之间的联系进行广泛研究的跳板是一个简单的经验关联：“高生育率社会……往往是热心，虔诚和对宗教充满热情的。相反，生育率越低，……脱离组织或机构宗教的倾向就越大。生育率是衡量宗教行为和奉献精神的有效指标”（第3页）。詹金斯（Jenkins）承认，产生这种相关性的因果关系可能是双向的，也可能是其他因素造成的联合因果关系的产物。但是他对这本书及其贡献的强调是，生育能力是宗教信仰的决定因素。詹金斯将其归因于生育率对性别角色，性行为和社会年龄结构的影响。安全的另一个首要因素是：过渡前低收入社会普遍存在的不安全感在富裕的低死亡率当代社会中已基本消失，随着传统的宗教信仰和实践越来越占主导地位，这破坏了传统的宗教信仰和实践。在第一章简要介绍了他的论点之后，詹金斯将两章专门介绍了从19世纪到现在欧洲的生育率下降及其对宗教信仰和实践的各种影响。第四章考虑了在二十世纪后半叶发生的亚洲和拉丁美洲生育率的下降，随之而来的是宗教信仰的变化（两个地区的情况各不相同）。第5章考察了美国，在生育与宗教信仰的联系上有时被认为是特殊的；詹金斯认为，这毕竟不是那么例外。第6-8章专门讨论了撒哈拉以南非洲和伊斯兰世界，那里现在仍然存在着剩余的高生育率和宗教原教旨主义社会。第7章强调伊斯兰世界内生育率的异质性，低生育率的伊朗代表了当代伊斯兰教与生育率的一个联系。贯穿整个主题的一个主题是，国际移徙，特别是从高生育率，宗教较多的国家到低生育率世俗国家，使发送国和接收国的人口和宗教信仰复杂化，产生了重大的政治影响。在最后一章中，詹金斯（Jenkins）推测了生育率和宗教联系对这两种现象的未来的影响，强调了人口统计学过渡后世界对“信仰的未来”的影响。詹金斯（Jenkins）提出，低生育率迫使主要宗教在性道德体系的修订过程中开发出新的性，性别和家庭方法，以适应当前的人口现实。