Ableton Forum

Religion has, of course, always had the marking of collective and individual identity as one of its functions. However, in reaction against the threat of late modernity and postmodernity to identity, and in tacit acknowledgement of the associated problematizing of metaphysics and morality, this dimension has in all the world religions been allowed to expand beyond its natural scope and limits. Increasingly, religionists seem to define themselves sociologically, rather than theologically. The Durkheimian maxim that ‘the idea of society is the soul of religion’ is not so far from the preoccupations of activists who are more eager to establish institutes for Islamic social sciences than to build seminaries.
The result has often been a magnification of traditional polarities between the self and the other, enabled by the steady draining-away of religiously-inspired assumptions concerning the universality of notions of honour and decency. Examples are many and diverse. Who could have thought that Buddhism, apparently the most pacific of religions, could have provided space for a movement such as Aum Shinrikyo, thousands of whose acolytes have been interrogated in connection with terrorist outrages against innocent civilians? Central to the cult’s appeal, it seems, has been a redefinition of Buddhism as a movement for the preservation of East Asian identity. In India, a vegetarian creed such as Hinduism, in Gandhi’s province of Gujarat, has now generated religious identity movements which, to the horror of more traditional practitioners, appear to recommend the expulsion, forced conversion, or massacre, of non-Hindu minorities. The process of the ‘saffronising’ of India, descending on the Ayodhya flashpoint, is seemingly well-advanced, and the prospects for regional peace and conviviality have seldom seemed less hopeful.

A devout shamanist, Genghis Khan believed that his close standing with the divine helped him to win wars. He had often “felt the presence and heard the voice of God speaking directly to him in the vast open air of the mountains in his homeland and by following those words, he had become the conqueror of great cities and huge nations.

Before engaging in battle, Genghis Khan would sometimes pray for days, alone on a mountain, seeking the guidance of the Eternal Blue Sky.

sweetjesus wrote: If you had read the actual texts I linked to you would not feel the need to defend your belief.

The group has broken off from LDS and is called The Fundamentalist Group of Latter Day Saints

A devout shamanist, Genghis Khan believed that his close standing with the divine helped him to win wars. He had often “felt the presence and heard the voice of God speaking directly to him in the vast open air of the mountains in his homeland and by following those words, he had become the conqueror of great cities and huge nations.

Before engaging in battle, Genghis Khan would sometimes pray for days, alone on a mountain, seeking the guidance of the Eternal Blue Sky.

Angstrom wrote:

A devout shamanist, Genghis Khan believed that his close standing with the divine helped him to win wars. He had often “felt the presence and heard the voice of God speaking directly to him in the vast open air of the mountains in his homeland and by following those words, he had become the conqueror of great cities and huge nations.

Before engaging in battle, Genghis Khan would sometimes pray for days, alone on a mountain, seeking the guidance of the Eternal Blue Sky.

from "Ghengis Khan and the making of the modern world" - Jack wetherford

Buddhists though, are of course capable of nastiness, as are Christians and Musilims, etc. In fact a close look at some of Sri Lankas (Buddhist run) state policies would confirm that.