PD James imagined back in 1992 a future where there were no more children for reasons unknown and as a result of this mass infertility society was breaking down. Here’s the trailer to the 2006 film adaptation.

It’s powerful dystopian stuff and the film is replete with Christian imagery (although not quite as clear as in the book).

Well, in some parts of the world PD James’ chilling vision is closer to reality than any of us should really be comfortable with. That part of the world is the West. It doesn’t just say something, it SHOUTS something about the values of our society & some of the consequences of the world we’re making.

Some clues: Western couples are marrying later & later, young people not having children for all sorts of reasons (climate change prominent among them), something is going on with birth rates, there is not just the possibility of a fertility crisis, but an actual crisis. Blue countries have birth rates below replacement level, red countries above.

Now that might not seem like a huge deal in a world that will continue to increase people towards 10 billion but that masks a huge amount of upheaval. Difficult choices lie ahead & cultures are going to change in massive ways as blue countries deal with an ageing & declining population and red countries export people in huge numbers. But there should be some serious thinking about the whole way of life we have created. It is unhealthy enough to half the sperm count in men in a generation, it is selfish enough to dissuade women from having children, it is hopeless enough to dissuade the young from parenthood, it is full of toxins in the food we eat & the cultural air we breathe. The Machine, as Paul Kingsnorth would affirm, is killing us.

Yet what should mark Christians out is as Stanley Hauerwas said, “For Christians do not place their hope in their children, but rather their children are a sign of their hope . . . that God has not abandoned this world.”