center of the city. There, he utters his entire message: “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” At which point, the citizens of Nineveh got religion! They quickly comprehended the context within which the message was sent. This was pretty much their last chance. They should best perceive the consequences of ignoring the policy that the message suggested. In due fashion, they repented of their evil ways. They donned sackcloth and they accepted the redemption opportunity that God had offered them. Such is power of context. A message, though succinct, can move mountains.

As is always the case, examples that demonstrate the negative are as interesting as the positive. Our theme is that religion has been instrumental in reinforcing the evolutionary survival of its groups of believers. We can consider three religious social groups that, to varying degrees, demonstrate that such groups are in fact engaged in an evolutionary struggle and that not always do they win. Let us consider the Shakers, the Incas and the Mayas as object lessons; certainly there are others, but these give us a flavor of the threats that must be engaged and overcome if the group is to survive.

Formed as an offshoot of the Quakers, the Shaking Quakers and hence the Shakers were, for a time, a thriving religious community. Their beliefs, however, were perceived to be at significant odds with more dominant religious affiliations and as a consequence they suffered severe discrimination at the hands of other religions’ followers; a demonstration that competition among religious communities can sometimes be a contact sport.

Religious persecution notwithstanding, the Shakers made a number of extremely innovative contributions to the art and technology of the day. These included highly functional and utilitarian architecture, beautiful albeit simple furniture and a highly organized lifestyle. For a time, they thrived. Unfortunately, their religious dogma suffered from two rather debilitating deficiencies. First, they had a very strong moral stance that endorsed the practice of celibacy. Interestingly enough, this had the very positive benefit of diminishing the social distinctions between men and women. Probably more than any other social or religious grouping, the Shakers were truly gender neutral with respect to their everyday environment. Unfortunately, total celibacy runs at cross currents with the biological evolutionary process; continuation of the species becomes problematic. Moreover, as we’ll consider in some detail in Chapter 8, a necessary capability of social structure is the proper provisioning of the young to carry on the existing social order.

A deficiency of Shaker dogma was the source and interpretation of the dogma itself. Shakerism was not heavily grounded in either written words or long-held traditions. Consequently, the philosophy and direction of the church tended to vary as the old leaders died and new leaders came to the fore. As a warrantor of trust, the continuity of a belief system over long periods is a source of strength for a religious organization. If long-term stability over many generations of believers is not achieved, then the group may well find itself at a societal disadvantage relative to other groups. In this case, the end result seemed to be that the Shaker faithful either died off or drifted away from the faith. The end result was the virtually total decline of the religion itself. Thus, we would suggest that from an evolutionary standpoint, the Shaker variant of Protestant Christianity sprung up as a point mutation. While its characteristics were laudable in certain instances, this variant was not judged worthy by the process of natural selection and hence became extinct.

Another example on a significantly larger scale is that of the Incas. In their emergent times, the Incas formed a thriving culture in the mid-Andes of South America. Over the ages, they developed a comprehensive, complex social order. They built cities, they developed commerce

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