As we head into a new year, the guardians of traditional religion are ramping up efforts to keep their flocks—or in crass economic terms, to retain market share. Some Christians have turned to  soul searching while others have turned to marketing. Last fall, the LDS church spent millions on billboards, bus banners and Facebook ads touting “I’m a Mormon.” In Canada, the Catholic Church has launched a “ Come Home” marketing campaign. The Southern Baptists Convention voted to  rebrand itself. A  hipster mega-church in Seattle combines smart advertising with sales force training for members and a strategy the Catholics have emphasized for centuries: competitive breeding.    

In October 2012 the Pew Research Center  announced that for the first time ever Protestant Christians had fallen below 50 percent of the American population. Atheists cheered while evangelicals beat their breasts and lamented the end of the world as we know it. Historian of religion Molly Worthen has since  offered big-picture insights that may dampen the most extreme hopes and allay the fears. Anthropologist  Jennifer James, on the other hand, has called fundamentalism the “death rattle” of the Abrahamic traditions.