There’s a copious amount of discussion about family structures in this book, but Todd adds to that an overlay of religion. He sees Protestantism, rather than the market, industry, or technology as the heart of the modern West. Its most critical impact was a drive for universal literacy, so that all the people could read the Bible in their own language. It also created the famed Protestant work ethic. An educated, industrious populous led to the takeoff of economic growth in Protestant countries. Indeed, Protestant countries were the most advanced industrial economies in Europe and basically remain the leaders. (Todd believes France benefitted from being adjacent to a band of Protestant nations).

French historian and demographer Emmanuel Todd was the first person to have predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. He noted that, unusually, its infant mortality rate was rising, and that they had even ceased publishing that statistic. Based on this and other data, he concluded that the Soviet Union had entered “the final fall.”

In something of a parallel to that work, his new book, La défaite de l’Occident (The Defeat of the West), published in January, says that the West is on track to lose the conflict in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, this was received poorly by critics who accused him of repeating Kremlin propaganda.

What caught my attention was that Todd blames the fall of Protestantism for unleashing a crisis in the heart of the West itself. And that this rather than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the true source of our problems. He writes, “The real problem facing the world today is not Russian will to power, which is very limited. It’s decadence at its American center, which is unlimited.” (You can see why people hated this). I read the book for myself to see what he had to say about Protestantism.

My earliest readers will know that that I’ve been learning French. I’ve mastered enough to essay Todd’s book, but am still sub-fluent. So you should validate the translations I provide here before relying on them, as they are a mixture of Google Translate and my own work.

Much of Todd’s research work has focused on the influence of historic family structures on ideologies. For example, he argues that the Russian family structure created a social state that was amenable to communism. Russian families were strongly patriarchal, and all of the sons lived with their father. This created an ideal of, simultaneously, authoritarianism (of the father) and equality (between the brothers). Communism was, in a sense, an embodiment of this type of social order.

There’s a copious amount of discussion about family structures in this book, but Todd adds to that an overlay of religion. He sees Protestantism, rather than the market, industry, or technology as the heart of the modern West. Its most critical impact was a drive for universal literacy, so that all the people could read the Bible in their own language. It also created the famed Protestant work ethic. An educated, industrious populous led to the takeoff of economic growth in Protestant countries. Indeed, Protestant countries were the most advanced industrial economies in Europe and basically remain the leaders. (Todd believes France benefitted from being adjacent to a band of Protestant nations).

If Protestantism brought positives to Europe, it also introduced the idea of inequality in a profound way, through its idea of the elect and the damned. Hence Protestant countries also created the worst forms of racism (as in the United States) and antisemitism (as in Germany). He cites the fact that Protestant areas of Germany were more supportive of the Nazis than Catholic ones.

The root of the nation state is also in Protestantism, not in the French Revolution or anything of that nature. He writes, “With Protestantism, there appeared peoples who, by too much Bible reading [in their vernacular], believed themselves chosen by God.”

In this analysis, he seems to basically be recapitulating Max Weber, of whom Todd describes himself as a student.

Protestantism Active, Zombie, and Zero

If Protestantism lies at the heart of the West, then the disappearance of Protestantism is a crisis for the West.

Todd divides religions in modern societies into three states: the active state, the zombie state, and the zero state.

In an active state, people attend church regularly. They have families on the Christian model, and they do not cremate their dead. (Christianity has always frowned on cremation as denying the hope of the resurrection of the body).

In a zombie state, people no longer attend church regularly, but still turn to the church for baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Critically, in a zombie state, people still hold to the habits and values of the old religion. So in a Protestant zombie state, people would still have the Protestant work ethic, place a value on literacy (education), etc. They largely retain Protestant practices around family and avoiding cremation. Especially they retain “the ability for collective action.”

In a zero state, people no longer even have church weddings or funerals. They don’t have their children baptized. In the zero state, the habits and values of the old religion have disappeared. People embrace cremation. And they abandon the Christian family structure. Todd sees the arrival of “marriage for all” as marking the definitive point of arrival at a religious zero state.

I did not note exactly when he said the United States entered a Protestant zombie state, but it encompassed the first part of the twentieth century up until about 1965. Todd notes that the zombie Protestant era was very good for America, with an extended period of triumph from FDR to Eisenhower. But that does not mean a zombie state always produces good outcomes. He also sees Nazism as arising out of a Protestant zombie state in Germany.

Around 1965, America entered a transition phase towards a zero state. In his treatment of the UK, Todd illustrates the loss of the habits and values of Protestantism by pointing to a softening of the culture of the English public schools (which, confusingly to Americans, are actually their most elite private schools). The same phenomenon occurred to a lesser extent here at elite prep schools and colleges. We see the transition in a few phenomena. One has been steady grade inflation over time. Todd cites figure showing that students spend significantly less time studying today than they used to as well. Another is the loss of the ethic of public service and self sacrifice. Many of the graduates of those schools fought, and even died in World War II. Rather than go directly to college, George H. W. Bush joined the Navy right after graduating from Phillips Andover to fight as an aviator in the Pacific theater. By Vietnam this became the exception. A recent newsletter from Matthew Yglesias on why colleges students need to study more covers similar territory here.

But just as the positive qualities of Protestantism began to unravel, so did the negative. In particular, Todd see the civil rights movement and the entire subsequent efforts toward full social and economic integration of blacks into mainstream society as a product of Protestant decay. To him, racism and discrimination against blacks were not just regrettable byproducts of a Protestant belief in inequality, but played a core function in structuring American society. Putting blacks into the role of “the damned” in society was what allowed there to be equality among whites themselves.

With the Obergefell decision in 2015, the transition phase ended and America definitively arrived at a Protestant zero state.

I’m more going to present Todd’s theories than attempt to rigorously analyze them, but it is worth noting that there are things one could critique here. For example, while there may have been a base level racial equality among whites, all whites were certainly not viewed as equal, as prewar Catholics and Jews could attest.

Also, the 1950s are supposedly part of the Protestant zombie era, and yet that was the high water mark of church attendance in the United States. Todd pooh-poohs the idea that America has been that distinct from Europe on that front. He says research shows people inflate their church attendance levels in surveys. But no one disputes that the 1950s were an era of high church attendance.

Todd also brutally dismisses the evangelical movement, seeing it as heretical and not really Protestant at all. But the only source he cites for that take is Ross Douthat’s book Bad Religion, which does not suggest he has a sophisticated understanding of American evangelicalism.

That brings up one of the key weaknesses of Todd’s analysis of America. His analysis of contemporary America leans heavily on writers like Douthat, names that are known and are legitimate, but are in an important sense dissident or peripheral. Others in this vein that he refers to are Joel Kotkin and John Mearsheimer. This will weaken the credibility of his arguments with many American readers who defer to mainstream consensus authorities – although those reading here definitely cast a wider net that includes dissident sources. American evangelicals, of course, are likely to discount critiques coming from Catholic commentators like Douthat.

I was particularly struck that Todd’s framework aligns quite well with my own three worlds model. The transition from zombie Protestantism starting circa 1965 is also when I say the status of Christianity (especially Protestantism) starts to go into decline in America. That transition phase covers my Positive and Neutral Worlds.

Read More