The thing that Puritans, Quakers, and Catholics living in England in the 1600s all had in common is that they were in the religious minority, which is why many of them chose to form new lives in the New World.
Charles Darwin proposed that theory looking at birds in the Galapagos islands.
Buddhism gradually lost its popularity in India because it grew increasingly remote from the population at large. Now, almost 80% of the population is Hindi, their religion is mostly Hinduism.