Germany: A society without children is a society without a future.

Read the article in the Weekly Standard written by Steven Ozment, professor of history at Harvard, about Germany's plight.

In Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Germany, native birth rates barely leave a single offspring behind to replace its two parents. As a result, large and growing numbers of foreign workers--predominately Bosnian, Turkish, and African Muslims--have immigrated to Western Europe to work the vacant, or unwanted, jobs native Europeans now lack the manpower to fill. The economic and social costs of European reluctance to be "fruitful and multiply," as the Bible puts it, are high and going higher for Europeans. Denmark's immigrant population is only 5 percent Muslim, yet that 5 percent receives 40 percent of the state welfare budget, and those families are just beginning to grow.

The civic and political costs promise to become even more frightening as immigrant populations
grow unchecked and assimilation to European languages and culture remains partial and increasingly tactical. Should there be successful Muslim proselytizing among German youth--many of whom do not share their elders' flight from the traditional family, religion, and work ethic--Germany could become, religiously if not yet politically, a mixed Muslim state within a quarter-century.

In Germany's large Muslim communities, speaking German and mastering the German Basic Law are proving to be effective tools not only for immigrant assimilation to German culture, but also for the ascendancy of immigrant culture over German. With the continuing growth of these communities, and the construction of mammoth mosques within them, will come increasing demands by the inhabitants to govern by sharia law rather than by German Basic Law.

One might have expected that Germans, who have been historically Europe's most theologically literate people, would have rediscovered and reembraced the lessons and resources of their own Catholic and Protestant heritage in coming to terms with European Islam. The misdeeds and shortcomings of those Christian churches in the 20th century do not merit their present oblivion. This is especially true in light of Christianity's vital historical contributions to European law, culture, and polity, without which Germans might still today be wandering across Germania in search of an Arminius.

Despite some countervailing evangelical straws in the wind, Germans today have hardened their agnosticism and atheism against established religion, apparently believing, counterintuitively, that the sermons of Luther and Bonhöffer are a less mighty fortress against Germany's gnawing problems (low native birth rates and bleak existentialism) than the old tin drums of Günter Grass and Jürgen Habermas. It is a good German question to ask today: Which of the two are more likely to assist new mothers with child-care and child-rearing and keep Germans' sunny-side up?

A year and a half ago, in a gripping interview with Die Zeit, Matthias Platzeck, Franz Müntefering's successor as Social Democratic party chairman, complained about the large numbers of Germans who no longer believe in the traditional German family, religion, and work ethic. One need only count late-20th-century Germany's historically low birth rates, scant church attendance, and mini-work-weeks with early retirement and cushy pensions, to see the gravity of Platzeck's complaint.

Germany demographics traditional German family Christianity Islam