against persuasion?

Religion and the Right to Be Left Alone – Avatans Kumar: Some of these faiths teach that spiritual experiences transcend sectarian boundaries and aren’t limited to one faith. Key Hindu beliefs illustrate this idea: Hinduism holds that many paths access one underlying Truth. The Rig Veda, Hinduism’s oldest text, concisely reflects this with the aphorism “Truth is one, but the wise call it by many names.” At the heart of proselytizing is exclusivity. There is a belief within proselytizing traditions that their faith alone has access to spiritual experiences in this life and beyond. Such exclusivism has led to violence. Over the half-millennium following Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and the Edict of Milan in 313, Christian leaders and followers actively destroyed sites and traditions of paganism as they expanded across Europe. One problem with Kumar’s contrast between peaceable many-paths religions and violent exclusivist religions: It doesn’t account for the persistent…