memes and memplexes

Memeplexes have been employed recently in attempts to understand religion. In the case of Christianity, the idea suggests, the Christian memeplex "evolved" based upon the Jewish religious teachings, among others, to eventually form the Catholic church, followed by various schisms leading to the Eastern Orthodox churches and various Protestant churches. In this process, various theologians, political leaders, writers, and religious visionaries have added and deleted individual memes from the Christian memeplex resulting in the formation of new but related memeplexes, or (religions/sects). The process of schism, like evolution, is ongoing, and as a result smaller and less differentiated memeplexes have arisen within the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions. The same process could be said to be occurring in the case of many sets of belief.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memeplex