The Fertility Gap: More Christians on the Way

We see parallels today between the modern West and ancient Rome. The low pagan fertility rate meant that Rome needed to import workers—and soldiers—from the farthest reaches of the empire and beyond. Rome lost its social cohesion. So, Rome fell. The Christian Church survived because believers had been multiplying. And what is going to cause Christianity to recover in the modern West may be precisely the same phenomenon.

For the last half century, Western industrialized nations, fearing overpopulation and despoiling the planet, have made slowing population growth one of their top priorities. So now we are in the middle of what one observer calls a "global baby bust"—except, that is, among devout Christian families, those who take seriously the biblical mandate to "be fruitful and multiply." It shows that when Christians live out the biblical worldview, we not only survive, we thrive.