Throughout the history of conversion worldwide there have been times whenconversions were imposed by force or, at least, strongly encouraged in order for peopleto prosper in a newly established social order. The use of military force, social pressure, andeconomic incentives has been employed by followers of world religions at least at some point in their histories to bring people into the fold. These external forces of conversion can be potent motivators for religious change, and sometimes the fundamentalist interpretation of a religion may in part provide legitimation for such aggression. The history of colonialism is replete with instances of forcible conversions, where external forces played asignificant role in conversion patterns.Kapstein (2000) states these issues well in his book The Tibetan Assimilation ofBuddhism: Conversion, Contestation, and Memory:Customarily, when we think of conversion, it is individual conversion that we have inmind. Following James, we sometimes think ofthis as a sudden and dramatic reorientationof consciousness, marked by profound changes of sentiment and of faith. By contrast,what I have attempted to illustrate here is that when it is conversion of a nation that is atissue, the gradual transformation of cosmological frameworks, of ritual, intellectual andbureaucratic practices, and ifhistoric and mythic narratives through which the nationalidentity is constituted are among the themes to which we must attend. (p. 65)
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