Christian Nationalism, Ethno-Religious Threat & Nationalist Pronatalism - "nationally representative data reveal Christian nationalist ideology is the second strongest predictor of support for nationalist pronatalism, behind only patriarchal attitudes" https://t.co/CFPi3MCSqV
— Rebecca Sear (@RebeccaSear) September 21, 2022
Are you ready for a shocker?
Christian people believe...Christian things. No, it's true. From the first line of the abstract:
What fuels both enthusiasm for increasing “American” birth rates and fears about their decline?
Forgetting for a moment the author's shock that the two things could be related -- a trend is going a particular way, is there maybe some link between a wish to reduce the size of this trend and the wish to reverse it entirely? -- the ultimate answer they discover is the Christian tradition of having large families.
One of Mark Steyn's most popular columns (where he first started addressing the concerns about white birthrates across the globe) was recently republished, regarding the tale of Jesus Christ's birth as seen by Luke.
Confronted with all the begetting in the Old Testament, the modern mind says, "Well, naturally, these primitive societies were concerned with children. They needed someone to provide for them in their old age." In our advanced society, we don't have to worry about that; we automatically have someone to provide for us in our old age: the state. But the state - at least in its modern European welfare incarnation - needs children as least as much as those old-time Jews did. And the problem with the European state is that, like Elisabeth, it's barren.Collectively barren, I hasten to add. Individually, it's made up of millions of fertile women, who voluntarily opt for no children at all or one designer kid at 39. In Italy, the home of the Church, the birthrate's down to 1.2 children per couple - or about half "replacement rate". You can't buck that kind of arithmetic.
The question should really be why the Rebecca Sear view, that there's a "threat" to the notion that hey we're really great people wouldn't the world be a better place with even more of us, has any validity.
The connection seems to be that "Christian nationalism" is bad because authoritarian regimes also try to push for more babies to be born. That this same "arithmetic" is in play never seems to occur to them: the need to shore up the population numbers in order to provide a population base required to maintain their state. Indeed you're a pretty dumb national leader to not wish to increase your population numbers: that our modern society feels the notion that mass immigration is a solution to this conundrum is the attitude that requires justification (and doesn't find much of it): it's awfully hard to square the circle of hey we're a really great people wouldn't the world be better if we were utterly replaced or its intersectional corollary hey we're an absolutely shitty systemically racist and exploitatively capitalist people wouldn't the world be better if we brought more and more people into this cesspool.
The article isn't yet posted on libgen so we can only suppose the wacky "proofs" that the authors have presented to back up their thesis, but we can pick apart some of their assumptions:
belief that dominant cultural group members (Whites, Christians, men) are threatened
Seems pretty straightforward doesn't it? When the number of polar bear births falls below the number of polar bear deaths we don't hesitate to think that it might "threaten" the species even though over the medium term polar bear birthrates rise and fall while white human birthrates simply plummet. If they don't accept the demographic statistics being put out by numerous agencies of officialdom then they probably should be putting forward their own information and explaining why it's superior to the information we already have.White Christian nationalism—an ideology that looks to conform American identity and values to those of a traditionalist, ethnicized Christianity
Again its unclear what the authors think is bad or even incorrect about this belief. While the American identity and values were properly thought of as non-denominational (down to the wording in the Bill of Rights regarding Congress establishing a religion) they certainly were also Christian. The Crimes Act of 1790, one of the first pieces of legislation in the United States, made murder illegal and more importantly made murder illegal using the Christian definition of murder. Under Buddhism for example, murder includes killing of an animal as well as a human. Basically what they're saying is that a conservative Christian mindset wants to keep ("conserve" we might say") America's Christian nature. Gee golly, thanks guys.
This same "I'm analyzing this dataset and x1 is somehow tied to x2 and x3 and x4 in a way that it isn't tied to y1 or y2" level of pure genius can be found in their shocking discovery that...
Recent, nationally representative data reveal Christian nationalist ideology is the second strongest predictor of support for nationalist pronatalism
Well shave my nuts and call me Charlie. If you happen to believe that a Christian nation is the best kind of nation (and it's a pretty lousy Christian who doesn't), that tends to correlate to a belief that more Christian babies should be born into said nation. Maybe I shouldn't have brushed over their lack of critical thinking skills at the top of this post, it could be awfully important to understanding their level of "expert analysis".
The belief that Whites or Christians face “the most discrimination” as opposed to various minorities also predicts nationalist pronatalism.The entire point of the article, it seems, is to take 100% accurate and legitimate concerns by conservative Christians and then try to imply that the only realistic and Christian solution to the problem is somehow sinister because this is exactly the sort of thing a conservative Christian aware of these things would be concerned with. It's the epitome of circular logic that doesn't address what's usually their favourite thing: "root causes".
There is, however, one hilarious throwaway line in the abstract:
This association is stronger for men and virtually non-existent among Blacks
Funny enough the group that has a ton of illegitimate babies running around isn't quite as keen on having even more paternity suits dropped in their lap. Who knew?
