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Religion by the numbers: Demography drives change

Demography drives religious change. That bald comment is too obvious to be worth making, but it’s surprising how little attention demographic factors receive in most histories of religion, particularly of Christianity. That neglect means we miss a very large part of the story.

Given a sufficiently high birth rate, a minority religious community can rapidly be come a dominant majority, with all that implies for distributing social power and shaping conflict. Alterna tively, migration can transform the religious economy of a hitherto static society.