In your opinion what causes christians to believe in Jesus

[Alan V]

...far beyond any attribution to personal choice unfettered by coercive factors.

This last part is problematic for your theory, because autonomy is one of the strongest predictors in motivational psychology. People value control so much they’ll pay more just to keep it. The difference between influence and coercion is exactly how much autonomy is preserved. I wouldn’t be surprised if individuals raised in coercive religious environments were more likely to reject religion altogether.

Social environments do have an influence, but your autonomy, free of coercion, is a far better predictor of what beliefs and behaviors you'll adopt.

What about misinformation and disinformation, or even the lack of information?  If you spread propaganda and suppress more accurate information, people may not even be aware that you are coercing them. They may not even realize what their choices are if you have loaded the language with which they think.

People have to know what their real choices are to make good choices.  But once you pull them into an information bubble, you can motivate them very well indeed.  This situation hasn't really improved with the internet, though it had the promise to.

Religious people start with children exactly because they can preclude certain possibilities if they get them early enough.  That's why it takes some of us, at least, so long to get over religious assumptions.  They believe they are justified in doing this by the fact that the futures of the souls of their children are at stake. The fact that some escape this treatment is not exactly a recommendation for them to stop when it's a numbers game.