The remarkable global decline in human fertility has coincided with a move away from institutional religion. Church attendance is a strong predictor of future childbearing.1 Thus, one possible explanation for that coincidence is that secularization contributed to the decline in fertility. Previous research suggests that family formation may lead to increased religious service attendance.2 Thus, the decline in religious service attendance could also be the result of the decline in fertility. In this interesting book, Jenkins explores the second possibility. His is not the first book to do so. However, it is the first to explore the linkage on a global scale (18). It draws a convincing picture of a world in which “faith is so often bound up with fertility” (181).
Social scientists will search the book in vain for empirical evidence of the contribution of family formation to the decline in institutional religion. Britain is one...