If these two religions hadn’t been mass marketed so effectively, the idea of world peace might not be such a cliche

Islam and Christianity have sure done a super job spreading the word. Half of the world’s current population is either Christian or Muslim, with the two religions roughly on par with each other. Neither religion is pausing for breath, and both should easily maintain or increase their share of the world’s religion markets in the coming century.

Religion is a market. It’s big business. Everyone knows tele-evangelists have been raking in the big bucks off believers for years. Christian Post publishes a list of America’s largest churches. Thirty five of the top one hundred churches, coined gigachurches, lure in more than 10,000 Christ lovers per week. The other sixty-five in the top hundred draw in more than 6,000. There are now churches online, whose congregations span across borders. The attendees pay church membership fees, buy crosses and wafers, and send their kids to Christian schools and camps.

Islam hasn’t been quite as efficient at monetizing their market. There are no gigamosques, as such, and since the majority of Muslims live in poorer parts of the world, they lack the disposable income for potential Muslim tele-evangelists to milk the most from it. The annual pilgrimage to Mecca remains a nice money spinner for the Saudi Arabian economy. Three million people show up annually, infusing the Meccan economy with US$100m. Saudi Arabian Airlines derives 12% of its annual income from the pilgrimage.

Both religions have great marketing teams they call missionaries. The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints (LDS) has some of the most active missionary teams in the Christian market, with over 50,000 Mormons at any given time spreading Jesus Christ’s and Joseph Smith’s words at their own, not the Church’s, expense for two years. It’s a very sweet deal for LDS — fresh converts brought in without having to spend a dime to get them, like having your very own multi-level marketing scheme without having to pay any downline commissions for bringing in sales. When I was 13, our family drove across country, and we stopped for an afternoon in Salt Lake City, Utah to visit the Mormon Temple grounds. By my mother innocently filling out the guestbook there, the ever efficient Mormons logged our address and within a month a Mormon self-financed proselytizer was knocking at our door and trying to convert the entire family. Talk about chasing up every available lead!

Missionaries have always found ready targets in the poor and the disenfranchised. The classic missionary stratagem is to show up in an economically undeveloped area, say an Indian tribal village in Central or South America, bearing educational tools and medicines. A tacit deal is struck. The “benevolent,” but uninvited, missionaries let the locals attend the schools and use the hospitals. In exchange, the villagers wind up as card-carrying Christians. American missionaries were able to penetrate the South Korean market when Korea was still economically undeveloped. They traded aid to the Korean nationalists against the Japanese for Korean adherence to the Bible and cross. About half of Koreans today say they subscribe to no religious philosophy. Of those that do, the largest group, about a third of all Koreans, is Christian, taking a significant market share from the old mainstay of Buddhism in less than fifty years. Now South Koreans comprise the world’s second largest source of Christian missionary talent after Americans, more than 12,000 strong in more than 160 countries. Teach a man to fish and he can eat for a lifetime. Convert a man to Christianity and he can proselytize for a lifetime.

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