Studies of the growth and decline of religious organizations tend to focus on the ability of American religious institutions to adapt within an open market system, but theories of adaptation may overstate the ability of organizations to respond to changes in their environment. Theories of selection, on the other hand, emphasize the role environmental forces play in organizational growth and decline. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of an ecological theory of selection for modeling growth and decline in a population of religious organizations. To test this model, I use historical data on a population of Southern Baptist congregations in the southeastern United States from 1784 to 2011. My analyses indicate that the processes of denominational growth and decline are consistent with the expectations of ecological theories of selection.
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