Religious Pluralism and Religious Participation: A Game Theoretic Analysis

Does religious pluralism decrease religious participation or increase it? Secularization theorists claim the former, while religious economies proponents claim the latter, and each side has used estimated pluralism-participation correlations to support its argument. Using a formal game theoretic model, this article shows how religious market forces and regulations generate plausible pluralism-participation correlations, whether or not the direct causal mechanisms argued by either side of the debate exist. The model generates testable hypotheses concerning the pluralism-participation relationship at both local and national levels and yields insights into previous empirical work.