Which religions seek to actively convert people (besides Christianity & Islam)?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Buddhism is evangelical.  It's not a cultural religion like Hinduism is.

Yeah, Buddhism is absolutely a proselytizing religion.

And absolutely a religion. I love how something Sir Monier Monier-Williams said disparagingly in 1889 has gone on to become the sound bite of choice for sophomoric #analysis of Buddhism well over a hundred years later. Two important points: 'Buddhism doesn't believe in an afterlife' is a downright bizarre statement, and people who point out that the doctrine of anatman means that reincarnation is widely misunderstood are absolutely right but don't provide any account of why that means it's misunderstood, largely because 'what is the reincarnating substance?' is widely acknowledged to be an incredibly tough paradox in (most forms of) Buddhist thought. It's a paradox to which there's no pat, barista-with-a-soul-patch-friendly answer. Google 'alaya-vijnana' for one actual Buddhist attempt at resolving this theologically.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Buddhism is evangelical.  It's not a cultural religion like Hinduism is.

Yeah, Buddhism is absolutely a proselytizing religion.

And absolutely a religion. I love how something Sir Monier Monier-Williams said disparagingly in 1889 has gone on to become the sound bite of choice for sophomoric #analysis of Buddhism well over a hundred years later. Two important points: 'Buddhism doesn't believe in an afterlife' is a downright bizarre statement, and people who point out that the doctrine of anatman means that reincarnation is widely misunderstood are absolutely right but don't provide any account of why that means it's misunderstood, largely because 'what is the reincarnating substance?' is widely acknowledged to be an incredibly tough paradox in (most forms of) Buddhist thought. It's a paradox to which there's no pat, barista-with-a-soul-patch-friendly answer. Google 'alaya-vijnana' for one actual Buddhist attempt at resolving this theologically.

I didn't totally follow what you wrote, and my knowledge of world religions is woefully impoverished compared to yours, but my impression as an admirer and semi-practictioner is that

1) the realization that there isn't any essential "thing" that can cycle on is vitally important to understand to shatter your mental fictions of a self and that

2) taken from 40,000 feet, the religion as a whole is agnostic as to whether the "rebirth" alternative presented to reincarnation means that some kind of (very crucially:  non-essentialized) consciousness can indeed pass on or whether rebirth is just an accurate way of conceptualizing the world vis-à-vis Mufasa's "our bodies become the grass, the antelope eat the grass," and that the former is much more prevalent in areas closer to the indian subcontinent.

Wait, that which is more prevalent in areas closer to the subcontinent? The way I'm reading the sentence, that seems inaccurate, but I could be reading what you're saying wrong. (The rest of it is accurate; it's just that 'from 40,000 feet' has struck me throughout my academic career as the wrong way of understanding a religion. It's a massive, massive problem that I have with comparative religions as a discipline.)

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Absolutely agreed (and I think I might know who the professor you're talking about is, and that he might teach at my university and have an office next to one of my professors'. Is it Stephen Prothero? I'll feel incredibly silly if I'm wrong but whatever). My other main problem with the more Eurocentric definitions is their absolute uselessness and obvious paltriness when faced with the fact that Buddhism had fulfilled all the sociological, political, and artistic functions of religion to a tee in every society in which it's been the dominant school of thought.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Buddhism is evangelical.  It's not a cultural religion like Hinduism is.

Yeah, Buddhism is absolutely a proselytizing religion.

And absolutely a religion. I love how something Sir Monier Monier-Williams said disparagingly in 1889 has gone on to become the sound bite of choice for sophomoric #analysis of Buddhism well over a hundred years later. Two important points: 'Buddhism doesn't believe in an afterlife' is a downright bizarre statement, and people who point out that the doctrine of anatman means that reincarnation is widely misunderstood are absolutely right but don't provide any account of why that means it's misunderstood, largely because 'what is the reincarnating substance?' is widely acknowledged to be an incredibly tough paradox in (most forms of) Buddhist thought. It's a paradox to which there's no pat, barista-with-a-soul-patch-friendly answer. Google 'alaya-vijnana' for one actual Buddhist attempt at resolving this theologically.

I didn't totally follow what you wrote, and my knowledge of world religions is woefully impoverished compared to yours, but my impression as an admirer and semi-practictioner is that

1) the realization that there isn't any essential "thing" that can cycle on is vitally important to understand to shatter your mental fictions of a self and that

2) taken from 40,000 feet, the religion as a whole is agnostic as to whether the "rebirth" alternative presented to reincarnation means that some kind of (very crucially:  non-essentialized) consciousness can indeed pass on or whether rebirth is just an accurate way of conceptualizing the world vis-à-vis Mufasa's "our bodies become the grass, the antelope eat the grass," and that the former is much more prevalent in areas closer to the indian subcontinent.

Wait, that which is more prevalent in areas closer to the subcontinent? The way I'm reading the sentence, that seems inaccurate, but I could be reading what you're saying wrong. (The rest of it is accurate; it's just that 'from 40,000 feet' has struck me throughout my academic career as the wrong way of understanding a religion. It's a massive, massive problem that I have with comparative religions as a discipline.)

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Absolutely agreed (and I think I might know who the professor you're talking about is, and that he might teach at my university and have an office next to one of my professors'. Is it Stephen Prothero? I'll feel incredibly silly if I'm wrong but whatever). My other main problem with the more Eurocentric definitions is their absolute uselessness and obvious paltriness when faced with the fact that Buddhism had fulfilled all the sociological, political, and artistic functions of religion to a tee in every society in which it's been the dominant school of thought.

Yes, it was Prothero.  I've read some of his stuff and really enjoyed it.

What I meant with the first part was that, from my highly limited experience, the most recent strains of Buddhism (that seem to all be in SE Asia) are more likely to have strictly materialistic practictioners who often don't believe in supernatural consciousness transferring forms of rebirth (Zen, Chan) whereas other, older, larger schools like Mahayana, Theravada, Tibetan Buddhism are more likely to believe in some form of supernatural consciousness-transferring after death that appears similar to reincarnation, but is not the same, because the transfer is not essentialized (i.e., there is no self, no whole person, nothing to transfer).  I could be wrong or ignorant, though, you tell me.

That's not a materially inaccurate understanding. It's weird to characterize the division that it makes geographically; it's more common to divide Buddhism into Buddhist Modernism (which can arise out of any of the traditional schools) and non-Modernist Buddhism. Buddhist Modernism originates as a movement in Victorian Burma and Ceylon and then becomes one of the chief ideological forces in Meiji Japan. Within the ambit of non-Modernist Buddhist thought, though, the Mahayana sects have a more supernatural understanding of things than the Theravada sects (although this is of course a huge generalization). That's what I thought you were referring to and what I was reacting to as potentially inaccurate.

I think your understanding is positioning Zen/Chan oddly but (embarrassingly for somebody focusing on Japan!) I don't really understand that particular school of thought well enough to dispute it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Sorry for the double posts, but atheists seek converts too. But as they say, if atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color.

I didn't think it was possible to reach critical mass of Trite in only two not-very-long sentences, but somehow our own The Obamanation has managed.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

...that doesn't make any sense. At all. I can't quite figure out that process of thought in worshipping that religion's God but not converting.

Actually kind of leads into why I'd never be a member of a non-prosyletizing religion, it violates my logical standards. If something is true for me it must be true for everyone.

It makes perfect sense if you see the Jewish people as a whole as a sort of priestly group (a concept which I would hope makes some sense to you since it's important in the Old Testament, memory of which I hope the left-Marcionites have not managed to entirely purge yet). Of course they'd have responsibilities and obligations and customs that other groups wouldn't. That's not the same thing as Jewish theology being somehow epistemologically less true for everybody else, which is why Gentiles are supposed to follow the Noahide laws. There were a number of these people back in "the day", called "God-fearers", including the bulk of the first wave of Gentile Christian converts.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

There's plenty of theories about physics and astronomy that haven't been proven and that we don't fully understand yet, but that doesn't mean that competing theories can both be true. Eventually some will be proven true and some false, just like so many theories in the past. Hence why any religion that holds that it's only true for certain people makes no sense, and why I could never be a part of one.

...that doesn't make any sense. At all. I can't quite figure out that process of thought in worshipping that religion's God but not converting.

Actually kind of leads into why I'd never be a member of a non-prosyletizing religion, it violates my logical standards. If something is true for me it must be true for everyone.

It makes perfect sense.  Traditional Jewish logic is that the Jews have a contract with God in which they perform extra obligations in return for a special status (with brutal severance terms for the Jews if they don't hold up their end of the bargain: see Deuteronomy...like all of it). Non-Jews are outside of the contract. They're welcome to worship and follow God (and even in the Bible you find pagans like Balaam who end up worshipping God) but none of the obligations of Jewish law apply to them because they are outside of God's deal with the Jews.

That sort of thinking and the notion that there are special rules binding on me but not most people would quite frankly horrify me. That definitely confirms that I'd convert out of Judaism if I was born Jewish.

If you were born Jewish you wouldn't be you, but if you were you you'd almost certainly be Reform or Reconstructionist.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

There's plenty of theories about physics and astronomy that haven't been proven and that we don't fully understand yet, but that doesn't mean that competing theories can both be true. Eventually some will be proven true and some false, just like so many theories in the past. Hence why any religion that holds that it's only true for certain people makes no sense, and why I could never be a part of one.

...that doesn't make any sense. At all. I can't quite figure out that process of thought in worshipping that religion's God but not converting.

Actually kind of leads into why I'd never be a member of a non-prosyletizing religion, it violates my logical standards. If something is true for me it must be true for everyone.

It makes perfect sense.  Traditional Jewish logic is that the Jews have a contract with God in which they perform extra obligations in return for a special status (with brutal severance terms for the Jews if they don't hold up their end of the bargain: see Deuteronomy...like all of it). Non-Jews are outside of the contract. They're welcome to worship and follow God (and even in the Bible you find pagans like Balaam who end up worshipping God) but none of the obligations of Jewish law apply to them because they are outside of God's deal with the Jews.

That sort of thinking and the notion that there are special rules binding on me but not most people would quite frankly horrify me. That definitely confirms that I'd convert out of Judaism if I was born Jewish.

If you were born Jewish you wouldn't be you, but if you were you you'd almost certainly be Reform or Reconstructionist.

I could easily be born Jewish from the same environment. There is a Jewish community in Bismarck you know.

Also there's approximately zero Jews in my scene who are more religious and/or observant than Bernie Sanders or Lena Dunham.

The point I'm making, and the point everybody's been trying to make for years, is that "your scene" is not the long and the short of you, and ending up in it is not some sort of inevitable fate. No, not even inevitable for people from Bismarck.

I say you'd probably be Reform or Reconstructionist because I think it's unlikely, admittedly based on my experience as a damn dirty Northeasterner, that anybody from a non-Hasidic/Haredi American Jewish background is going to look at any form of reasonably Nicene Creed-compliant Christianity and think it's more "all liberal, all the time" than Reform or Reconstructionist Judaism. I believe you that there are Jewish converts to hipster Christianity in "your scene"--I know Jewish converts to Catholicism and even Orthodoxy; why wouldn't I believe you?--but I'd be willing to bet they were looking for things at least marginally more theologically specific than "all liberal, all the time" in a religion. "Almost certainly" was too strong, sure.