[kjellsbells]

> most denominations will just disappear from evaporation and increasingly lax doctrine long before that.

Curious about this statement. Are you saying that doctrinal purity is required? I would have thought that Anglicanism especially tolerated an incredibly wide set of viewpoints. I still recall a one time Bishop of Durham saying that we had no right to insist on the veracity of the Virgin Birth. Is doctrinal laxity something measurable or simply a complaint the orthodox make when their fellow believers have moved away from them but are simply in the process of coalescing around a new set of principles?

[alexvoda]

I think purity and lack of purity are both required for a religion to be a successful meme.

To much purity and the religion faces a "no true scotsman" decline resulting in schisms and deconversion

To little, and it becomes too diluted to hold any significance.

The way a religious macromeme manages the level of purity in an evolving social environment is natural selection at work.

[aeneasmackenzie]

I mean relative to their own orthodoxy. Doctrinal laxity is a process that once started has never ended. Very quickly you end up with no doctrine at all and then people start to wonder why they’re getting up early on the weekend. Look at the Methodists, they’ve had two schisms (or one drawn-out schism? I’m not sure) in the last two years.