... An important contribution to the conversation about religion's changing role in society, and one that those interested in demography or contemporary religious life would do well to engage with.

An important contribution to the conversation about religion's changing role in society, and one that those interested in demography or contemporary religious life would do well to engage with.

Jenkins makes a clear argument and supports it well with impressive demographic breadth and fascinating historical depth. His contribution is highly relevant and could be crucial to a multidisciplinary hermeneutic for approaching fluctuations in fertility rates--such that policy makers, theologians, students, and scholars of world religion might engage critically with [Total Fertility Rate] trends and projections worldwide.

Fertility and Faith is a work of remarkable scholarship, amounting to a global overview of both the demographic transition and the decline in religious involvement.... Jenkins gives historians and social scientists plenty to ponder, providing both a remarkable panorama of the woods and an assiduous examination of the trees, displaying the fruits of years of research in a book that is completely accessible to a general audience. It deserves to be widely read.

In 'Fertility and Faith', Philip Jenkins lays out a compelling, data-driven, and cogently argued case for the intertwining nature of reproductive rates and the fervency of religious beliefs around the world. Overall, Jenkins shows that higher fertility rates generally correspond to high levels of religious commitment in a society while, conversely, lower fertility rates correlate with lower religous commitment. Rather than stipulate a simplistic cause and effect relationship considering this correlation, the author ably demonstrates that there is in fact a complex web of linkages and cyclical sociological reinforcements.