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8 February 2006 Volume 2, Issue 8 Though the ages, religions have spread around the world for any number of reasons. For example, the victorious country (and ruler) in a war might well impose a religion on the conquered people. Traders from Asia brought Islam to Africa. Missionaries brought the teachings of many Christian sects to Asia and Africa.
The Spread of Buddhism
The Jewish Diaspora
By the early nineteenth century, Jewish migrants resembled other central and western Europeans in traveling to the Americas in search of work, commercial advantage, or educational opportunity. Even later in the century, Jewish migrants to the United States were almost as likely to leave those countries that had begun to open opportunities for full citizenship to them as they were to leave places such as the Russian empire, where the threat of violent peasant attacks (pogroms) and levels of discriminatory practices in military service, schooling, and landownership remained very high. [From the article, “Diasporas,” in the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History.] Inside the Berkshire Encyclopedia:
For more on the spread of religion, try articles like African Religions, Buddhism, Chinese Popular Religion, Islam, Judaism, Protestantism, Religion and War, and Religious Freedom. The Importance of MissionariesFrom the beginning, Christianity has combined both personal witness and intentional mission organization to spread the gospel. Over the past five hundred years Christian missionary efforts have been aided by Western colonialism and domination of technology. In 2004 there were more missionaries than ever before in world history. Christians alone have over 400,000 missionaries spreading the gospel and spend an estimated $11 billion on foreign missions. The Mormon Church alone has over 55,000 missionaries serving in 160 countries. Evangelical Christians have made it their goal to convert the entire world population to Christianity and provide “a church for every people.” And yet it appears that Islam is the fastest-growing religion today, having increased from around 400 million in 1960 to over 1.3 billion in 2004. A significant reason for this growth is the high birthrate in Asia. But Islam is also growing in the former Soviet Union, Europe, and the United States through both conversion and immigration. Buddhism is also gaining many adherents in Europe and the United States. India is experiencing a Hindu revival and many Native Americans, Africans, and other groups are recovering their traditional religions. [From the article, “Missionaries,” in the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History.] 
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And migration has always been a primary vehicle for the spread of religion. Whether fleeing religious persecution or famine or in search of better economic opportunities, immigrants have brought their faiths to their adopted countries. That has been true of “wandering Jews” for almost two millennia and of the Quakers and Puritans who helped settle America. Migrations continue today with a steady stream of new immigrants from South Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Indeed, key countries of origin for naturalized U.S. citizens in 2003 included India, the Philippines, Vietnam, China, South Korea, and Iran. And the Center for Immigration Studies reports that in 1970, only 15 percent of Middle Eastern immigrants to the United States were Muslim. By 2000, some 73 percent of Middle Eastern immigrants were Muslim. And while we do not yet have a mosque in Berkshire County (as far as we know!), courtesy of 
For a thousand years Buddhists were on the move. They came from India into many parts of China, just as they had expanded into Sri Lanka. Mahayana, a new form of Buddhism, developed in northern India. It was a more aggressive and proselytizing faith than the passive Buddhism of earlier years. Shrines and giant statues of Buddha marked the path of their progress. Emperor Shomu in Japan embraced Buddhism in 737. Spared in an epidemic, he credited Buddha and erected the Great Buddha at Nara. Like Christianity and Islam, Buddhism spread not only with armies but also through energetic missionaries and proselytizers. Each left in its trail and on its soil great houses of worship and thousands of smaller ones, places for pilgrimage and devotion, libraries for the encouragement of learning and piety—in short: civilizations. [From the article, “Religion - Overview,” in the 
Persecution sparked important Jewish migrations, especially between 1000 and 1500. In Catholic Europe the Crusades heightened anti-Semitism; eventually anti-Semitism led to the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. Within the Muslim world, where Jews lived as constrained minorities in self-governing enclaves, trade may have motivated more Jewish mobility; certainly trade was one motivation for those Jewish merchants who first ventured into the Atlantic world and the Americas.
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