Diversity

Genesis, PART TWO, VII, 7.

(Numbers are expressed in Roman letters, a Roman numeral and an Arabic numeral.)

Laurinda and Christian attend Mass in York Minster in the 1900 of a timeline where there had been no Reformation: dimness, glories, chants and incense. In the York Minster of our timeline, I have meditated in a side chapel and attended an Evensong service where God was thanked for the lives of the founders of the Salvation Army and the Missionaries of Charity.

I appreciate the Hindu response to religious diversity, discussed in the combox here. In India, Hinduism incorporated the Buddha as a divine incarnation but Buddhism survived as a separate tradition by spreading through Asia. Although Hindus can also accept Christ as a divine incarnation, Christianity and several other traditions have maintained their integrity alongside Hinduism. There are synagogues with Indian Jewish congregations and the first European Christian missionaries to India found episcopal churches claiming apostolic succession from St Thomas. Sikhism is long established as a tradition distinct from its Hindu and Muslim origins. If, in SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers, some Anglicans had accepted absorption into Hinduism, others would not have. The diversity within Hinduism reflects the diversity without.