Religious switching encompasses not only conversion from Islam to Christianity, but also movement from Christianity to the category of religiously unaffiliated. Alt-right commentators explicitly link declining Christian religiosity to declining Western demographics. Specifically, these anti-Muslim thinkers believe moral decay leads to declining Christian religiosity, which in turn leads to lower Western fertility rates. Pew Research data do show that religiously affiliated women have higher birth rates than religiously unaffiliated women. The 2017 Pew Templeton Global Religious Futures project report predicts that “the 2015 to 2020 total fertility rate for religiously unaffiliated women is projected to be 1.6 children per woman, nearly a full child less than the rate of 2.5 children per woman for religiously affiliated women” (p. 18). However, there is no evidence that moral decay causes both religious switching and lower fertility rates. The white nationalist fears of moral decay and secularism indicate anxieties about internal threats from within Western society.

QUESTION: The fertility gap is striking — worth probing whether it persists across education and income levels, and whether it reflects cultural rather than religious causes. XREF: Connects to demographic transition research and the broader narrative around secularization and population decline.

Margaret Hodson, Baby Jihad, loc. 48