In wake of the recent military coup, Thailand is flirting with the idea of making Buddhism the state religion.

A Buddhist-majority society, Thailand leaves religious minorities alone. In theory, the government limits which groups can register and how many missionaries can enter, but in practice, reports the State Department: “Unregistered religious organizations operated freely, and the government’s practice of not recognizing any new religious faiths has not restricted the activities of unregistered religious groups,” or foreign missionaries.

The main limits are “laws prohibiting speech likely to insult Buddhism,” the State Department notes....

The replacement constitution may not be so ecumenical. The military has produced a more authoritarian document: The Senate would be appointed, for instance. More ominously, though the Constitution Drafting Assembly refused demands by Buddhist nationalists to make Buddhism Thailand’s official religion, they have been campaigning against the proposal as a result.

I can think of six great religions in the world: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and, yes, Atheism. Among Western elites, Christianity (and sometimes, when they're honest, Islam) has a reputation for intolerance.

Yet the facts are otherwise: On that list, there are only two for which there is no state which punishes people for leaving or not being a member of that religion: Christianity and Judaism. Every other belief system -- Atheism, Islam, Hinduism, and, yes, even Buddhism -- has an official footing in states where it is a crime to change one's convictions to leave, or otherwise simply "insult", that religion.

(And yes, I'm counting atheism as a religion. When you can be punished for disagreeing with it, it's definitely moved into religious territory -- from passive agnosticism, to positive fanaticism.)

People in the west think of Buddhism as much more "tolerant" than Christianity. And there are certainly intolerant Christians. But when was the last time we saw anything like this?

Buddhism has a special place in Sri Lankan politics; officials pay fealty to Buddhist clerics after assuming power, and the military has incorporated Buddhist rituals into its ceremonies.

Religious liberty remains tenuous even in areas far away from military conflict. Buddhist mobs, sometimes led by monks, have frequently attacked Christians, their churches, and their ministers. The authorities have been reluctant to arrest those responsible. With the constitutional sanction of Buddhism as a state religion as its guide, the Sri Lankan supreme court has ruled that proselytizing is not a protected religious activity under the constitution. (The jurists refused to recognize a Catholic medical group which, it declared, had provided an improper “allurement,” health care, to procure a conversion.)

Some Buddhist nationalists want more. Three years ago extremist monks formed the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), or the Pure Sinhala National Heritage party, to promote Buddhist nationalism. The party has opposed negotiations to end the Sinhalese-Tamil conflict, which has cost tens of thousands of lives.

One might cite the IRA, perhaps. But despite Catholic cultural trappings, the IRA's main issues were territorial and political, not religious. This difference becomes even more pronounced when you notice that the IRA, in fighting the British and Ulster Protestants, never also attacked some uninvolved third religious group, as the Buddhists in Sri Lanka did, or as Hindus do in Nepal.

Despite being the largest religion on planet Earth, there is no state in which it is a crime to speak against Christianity, or Jesus. There is no state in which it is a crime to convert from Christianity to another religion. And yet, of the five largest religious convictions, Christianity is consistently portrayed as one of the least tolerant.

Go figure.