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The spread of Islam provides numerous counter-examples. Maybe the Anglicans just weren't ruthless enough.



Perhaps. The example of Catholicism in Latin America would seem to bolster your argument. But each of those cases dealt with the substitution of one (indigenous) belief for another.

Maybe a better example would be the Soviet Union and its satellites, which spent seventy five years trying, without success, to abolish all religion, often violently. Even Stalin was forced to "rehabilitate" the patriarchy during the "Great Patriotic War." And we all know the story of Cardinal Wojtyla in Poland. Neither can the Chinese suppress the Falun Gong, nor completely eradicate the last vestiges of Buddhist theocracy in Tibet.

I detest religion in all forms. But government repression is only going to create more believers than it converts.