Question. Per stark-open-networks-theory-of-religious-growth, religious movements grow only if their members’ relationship networks include non-members AND non-members can become full participants without prohibitive barriers. By this criterion, is the current Unification Church an open or closed network? What specific structural features push it toward closure?
Why it matters. Stark’s theory predicts that closed networks shrink in absolute terms even when high-trust internally. If UC is currently a closed network, no amount of “evangelism intensity per member” will produce growth — the network openness must change first. The strategy diverges sharply: closed-network UC needs structural reform (relax barriers, broaden the relationship surface) before evangelism programs can work; open-network UC could grow with current structure plus better evangelism execution.
Current best guesses. Plausible closure-features of contemporary UC:
- Heavy in-group time commitments — Sunday services, mid-week prayer, special workshops, blessing-related events — that fill members’ calendars with member-only activities, leaving few non-member relationships to maintain.
- Marriage-only-via-Blessing norm — restricts the relationship vector that most contributes to network growth (Stark’s Christianity-in-Rome case explicitly cited intermarriage as a key open-network mechanism).
- Para-church separation of evangelism from church — the UPF / FFWPU / WFWP / Family Party structures allow members to engage non-members in religion-neutral “peace work” but funnel them away from the explicit gospel; this is a partial network openness that does not produce church-membership growth.
- Second-generation tendency — children raised in UC primarily socialize within UC families, producing a generation with thin non-member networks by default.
Closure-features may be deeper than evangelism strategy can address.
Source. Raised in br-05-how-to-develop-populist-model REVIEW, from stark-open-networks-theory-of-religious-growth.