Here’s some hopefully helpful stats on religious affiliation in Taiwan, one of your in depth examples:

http://a-bas-le-ciel.blogspot.tw/2012/08/religious-identity-in-taiwan-2001-2011.html

Which reinforces the fact the majority of the populace can be considered very, very “lay” adherents of a lose, syncretic Daoist-Buddhist pantheon, almost always used for personal purposes (praying/divination for healing, test acing, promotions, prosperity, etc.) and occasional traditional ceremonies (honoring dead family members, bountiful harvests, New Years, etc.) Overall, there seem to be very little religious identity turnovers in the past decade. Although depending on certain metrics used there might be a miniscule decline in active Buddhist affiliations.

Anyways, maybe something that can be added to your post.

mormonism has plateaued in the USA. amish and orthodox jews are still ascending, mostly through high fertility. i do not think this is sustainable.

Don’t worry, I enjoyed it anyway!

I should re-read it and get the books before asking, but I’ll be lazy and ask anyway: how predictive can we be with these autocatalytic models? For example, I’d like to know how they’d apply to some major minority American groups: Scientology, Mormonism, the Amish, and Orthodox Jews.

My best guess is that Scientology is now in a downward spiral, Mormonism has topped off into a sturdy self-enclosed minority and likewise the Orthodox Jews, but I just don’t know about the Amish because their population growth seems to be steadily exponential.

Regarding christianity in Ireland, given the decentralized nature of Irish society up until the 17th century it’s a fair point. The general narrative is that conversion was driven by ruling classes. So much so that in for example the 7th/8th century the downfall of “noble kindreds” were often linked to that their eponymous ancestor had rejected christianity (personalised by Patrick). This rejection been thus the source of their later downfall.

A good example of this is the case of the high-king Laoghaire Mac Néill (Laoghaire son of Niall of Nine Hostages — think M222+ study), his descendants the Cenél Laoghaire had fallen out of the kingship of the Southern Uí Néill by the 7th/8th century. In Tírechan’s “life of Patrick” (from the 7th century) this is explained by fact that Laoghaire (Lóegaire in Old-Irish) had rejected Patrick and christianity.

In comparison we see in Northern Uí Néill dynasties that his brothers Eoghan and Conail (from whom descend the Cenél Chonaill and Cenél nEoghain) accepted christianity and of course their descendants “prospered” until the flight of the Earls in 1607.

Usually the saints of early Ireland are all derived from the ruling princely classes, a good example been Colmcille (Columba — latin) who was a member of the Cenél Chonail and in the genealogies is a Great-Great-Grandson of Niall. Under Irish sucession laws he himself would have been a member of the “Derbhfhine” (four generational descendant grouping) of Niall and thus regarded as been of “kingly body”.

There’s also strong correlation between major religious sites having a connection to previous pagan sites (either kingly or of religious nature).

I see there’s parts of “Early Christian Ireland” (Cambridge University press) available in Google books that covers the conversion period:

http://books.google.ie/books?id=g6yq2sKLlFkC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

-Paul