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Notes -
right, I am not suggesting that the only true institution is one that resists change or evolution. And perhaps my OP misstated this. Genetic and memetic evolution will occur in most (every?) institution, and attempts to resist that are varying levels of tension in the system. I am trying to combine both an analytical frame and a point of view in the frame, which I think is muddying it.
I think there is a natural, healthy debate about what Church Five is, and this is the natural order of an institution or nation. The fact that the US has conservatives and liberals, and an internal debate about what do we progress and what do we conserve, and which parts are core to our identity is a reasonable debate. When a faith or organization says, which parts of our doctrine are non-negotiable, and which parts are developments, the same.
Whether memetic evolution, changes the nature of an institution or not, I think is an open question. What I am suggesting is that when memetic evolution occurs primarily through genetic replacement, something somewhat different is happening (this is akin to the concept of skinsuiting), and conflating the two or trivializing the difference is usually done by pointing to thenetic continuity.
My point of view is that thenetic continuity is less important than it is often made out to be when debating core identity.
I guess it's not clear to me why the memetic change being driven by genetic change is different from the general memetic change. To concretize a bit, I imagine a church founded by, say, Catholics. Consider two evolutions. In one case the descendants of the original founders (for whatever reason) convert to Mormonism and convert the theology of the church the same. In the second case the descendants of the original founders gradually move away or stop attending, but newcomers move in and gradually convert the church toward a Mormon theology. It seems to me that the church is no longer the same church in either case, whether the members are descended from the founders or not.
I also think the degree to which continuity is thenetic varies by institution. Consider, for example, an institution like "The Supreme Court of the United States." Or "The United States Congress." To the extent these institutions are continuous through time I think it is in primarily a thenetic way. In their form or structure.
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