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Baby Blues: How to Face the Church’s Growing Fertility Crisis...If current rates continue, most religious communities in America will shrink by more than half within three generations. But nondenominational Christianity might buck the trend.
Christianitytoday.com/ ^ | August 8, 2022 | Lyman Stone

Posted on 04/16/2024 6:19:13 AM PDT by daniel1212

In recent years, the fertility gap by religion has widened to unprecedented levels....

With birth rates at just 1.8 or 1.9 children per woman, versus a conversion-adjusted “replacement rate” of 2.44, religious communities in America will tend to decline by about 25 percent in each generation...

Virtually 100 percent of the decline in fertility in the United States from 2012 to 2019 can be explained through a combination of two factors: growing numbers of religious women leaving the faith, along with declining birth rates among the nonreligious....

Since 2002, the share of reproductive-age women who attended church weekly or more has fallen from about 35 percent to 24 percent....Religious birth rates simply are not high enough to offset losses from the move to irreligion...

Among weekly attending women, the true figure is just 2.1. If we add in women who are irregular attenders to count all people of faith together, then religious women in 2019 had a fertility rate around 1.8 or 1.9 children each....

Prior research [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30670212/] has suggested that beliefs about the Bible are a good indicator of fertility behaviors in general.

Figure 3 below shows two indicators. First, it details the total fertility rate (TFR)—or number of children born per woman—that a religious group would need to achieve to experience growth, given the conversion rates, and assuming there’s zero immigration into the country....

When the needed TFR is higher than the estimated TFR, it means that a religious group is likely to shrink over the next generation—unless it receives new members through immigration.

conservative nondenominational movements have seen extraordinary growth: They only need to have about 0.8 children per woman to grow, but in fact they have around 1.9.

(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...


TOPICS: Apologetics; Religion & Culture; Religion & Politics; Religion & Science
KEYWORDS: abortion; children; contraception; procreation
Excerpts of excerpt (300 word limit allowed). Quite complex and detailed. More reading required.

Be single, celibate and continent, or be married and have as many children as God will give, in a life of temperance and conservative evangelical faith. Besides negative birth rate, spoiled, over sensitive, children, there are other effects of contraception.

Related: The Amazing Baby Boom of Billerica, Mass.20 families had 11 children and 24 families had 12 children...large families were typical of early New England.

1 posted on 04/16/2024 6:19:13 AM PDT by daniel1212
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To: daniel1212
As the figure above shows, liberal Protestant denominations appear to be facing a dire situation.

Hallelujah!

2 posted on 04/16/2024 6:36:28 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: daniel1212

Many young men and young women nowadays do not see marriage and family as important life goals.

Many young men and women delay marriage and get married later and have children later, if they have children at all.

And when the couples who do have children ,finally do have children, they will have fewer children in their fertile lifetimes, than they would have in previous generations.

How do we change people’s attitudes about marriage and family?


3 posted on 04/16/2024 6:37:40 AM PDT by Dilbert San Diego
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To: daniel1212

Sola scriptura…..

Always the best plan.


4 posted on 04/16/2024 8:44:26 AM PDT by fishtank (The denial of original sin is the root of liberalism.)
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To: daniel1212

The future has always been created by men, for better or worse the males of the world saw futures they wanted, family legacies, the permanence of their peoples, the greatness of their nation or tribe, offspring and ancestors meant something, future generations meant something, men tend to think they impact the future, women are interested in the now, for themselves and their immediate comfort and stability.

In a feminized society of woman raised children and female run institutions, education and politics, the individual’s view of life and human existence shrinks and their world becomes small and focused on themselves and their oneness, their comfort and easiness of life, some start questioning the burden of carrying a child and delivering one and raising one, some today are even questioning the burden of a permanent male being a part of their comfortable little micro life.

Children and husbands are no longer something to aspire to but possible disruptions and unwanted challenges in what are tidy, simple little lives focused on perfect harmony in one’s own structured, unchallenging life where the highlights are more self-indulgence, self-pampering and the purity of one’s own unchallenged thoughts and emotions.

Children and husbands are introducing unknown humans into your bubble and without question bring a degree of chaos and constant newness to the princess and the pea world and require self-sacrifice for the group.

Some of this was evidenced in the decades of women who submitted to their biological impulse for children but then limited them in number and did it without accepting the adult human who was their father, children as better versions of pets, something to come home to and adore them but manageable for many years, in time some women decide not to bother with those distractions at all, a nice wardrobe serves them better.


5 posted on 04/16/2024 9:29:34 AM PDT by ansel12 ((NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.))
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To: daniel1212

Catholics, Christians need to come out of the heresy of contraception. It is fatal to faith as those with guilty consciences start avoiding church and God. “For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come towards the light so his works might not be exposed (John 3:20).” The anti-life contraception mindset leads to abortion as a backup form of contraception. Sex only for pleasure sets the stage for so-called gay marriage which leads to gender theory. The passions set loose through sex without responsibility leads to fatherlessness, the destruction of the family and angry violent young people. Christians who opened a crack for contraception at Lambeth in 1930 did a foolish thing. Catholics started going along with it big time in the 60s. The reason a second term for Trump will not result in large numbers of deportations, maybe just a few for show, is because we’re gonna need the people. Contraception and abortion can result in breast cancer, psychological problems, internal injuries and infertility. Contraception slowly destroys societies!


6 posted on 04/16/2024 10:11:29 AM PDT by MDLION ("Trust in the Lord with all your heart" -Proverbs 3:5)
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To: ansel12
In a feminized society of woman raised children and female run institutions, education and politics, the individual’s view of life and human existence shrinks and their world becomes small and focused on themselves and their oneness, their comfort and easiness of life, some start questioning the burden of carrying a child and delivering one and raising one, some today are even questioning the burden of a permanent male being a part of their comfortable little micro life. Children and husbands are no longer something to aspire to but possible disruptions and unwanted challenges in what are tidy, simple little lives focused on perfect harmony in one’s own structured, unchallenging life where the highlights are more self-indulgence, self-pampering and the purity of one’s own unchallenged thoughts and emotions.

In general terms, in a affluent country, enabled by contraception, this is much the norm. Spoiled, in one or two child families, not learning delayed gratification, increasingly "a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith." (Deuteronomy 32:20) However, in His mercy, more are seeking answers, and God can move hearts, while the need for street-level evangelical workers are needed.

7 posted on 04/17/2024 9:35:30 AM PDT by daniel1212 (Turn 2 the Lord Jesus who saves damned+destitute sinners on His acct, believe, b baptized+follow HIM)
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To: daniel1212

Something I truly miss about not being in Houston is pulling up to a 7-11 or some such store and having a friendly word with a street preacher as he engages you.


8 posted on 04/17/2024 9:41:22 AM PDT by ansel12 ((NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.))
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To: ansel12
Something I truly miss about not being in Houston is pulling up to a 7-11 or some such store and having a friendly word with a street preacher as he engages you.

Around here that is virtually unheard of! As would be a 7-11 or any store that allows it, except a Latino one.

9 posted on 04/17/2024 1:50:54 PM PDT by daniel1212 (Turn 2 the Lord Jesus who saves damned+destitute sinners on His acct, believe, b baptized+follow HIM)
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