Anti-Cliche challenge:Theocratic Empire as the good guys

The Mongols generally abstained from imposing religions. In addition, while in OTL, Tibetan Buddhism was introduced to China and did receive the most imperial support of all the Buddhist sects, Buddhism as a whole was accepted by the Chinese anyways by the Yuan Dynasty. I see it unlikely that the promotion of one minor sect of Buddhism could provoke the reaction asked. (Also, most Mongols still followed shamanistic principles until about the 16th and 17th centuries, so they might get annoyed too.)

e. But what if we go a little bit further back into Chinese History, and come up with a more protracted anti-Buddhist persecution under Wuzong? We can have the Tibetans build their empire earlier than OTL. We can see them invade China under the pretext of protecting Buddhists. Tibetans can do better than they did OTL, and the War in China can take a form of a Tang vs. Tibet Civil war, with the two factions espousing Taoism and Buddhism respectively. A third, radically-rationalist group can Arise out of the Chaos, and things can progress from there.
 
Good idea.
Religion as evil is very in vogue and you never really see it as the good guy...

I suppose you could try and go with some kind of 'pure' christianity which just wants to spread the word of god nicely and opposes the Europeans messing around in the Americas with mass killings and slavery and whatnot. How to get that yet still have it be a significant force though...sadly in the real world nice guys tend to finish last...

Well. Jesus himself was a mostly nice guy. Look what that got him. The idea is a world where Christians unite and wage war for self defense, rather than conquest.
 
http://www.amazon.com/Other-Time-Mack-Reynolds/dp/0671559265

Reynolds and Ing have an Aztec state in which priests abandon human sacrifice. In the story an advisor realizes this creates too many nearby enemies and simply has Cuahtemoc impose the new law. One could imagine scenarios in which a priest realizes that, and instead has the state have volunteers make other forms of sacrifices, lives dedicated to their people, art, service to the faith, etc, instead of giving up your own life. Maybe something similar offered to those captured in battle for sacrifice, giving the Aztec state an expanding source of labor, skills, and wealth and power.

Really interesting. I should try to track the book down.
 
Yuan Dynasty might work well, because Buddhism was too different from the Abrahamic understanding of religion for them to be classified as pagan or ungodly. Super-Mughals would be Muslims and very tolerant of Christians and Jews, as they were in India.

For this alt-Europe to really take form, it would greatly help if the enemy was atheistic, at least theoretically. There were many anti-Buddhist backlashes in China but most of them were Confucian or Neo-Confucian in nature. Given that the Mongol Khans greatly favoured Tibetan Buddhism, it wouldn't be a stretch for them to introduce it to China and heavily patronize it. The Chinese being a more rationalist lot, would think of all this as "barbarian superstition promoted by barbarians" and we'd end up with an anti-Buddhist backlash that was against all mysticism/metaphysical speculation and a santised version of Confucianism where anything pertaining to the supernatural was removed. This will of course, coincide with a flurry of discoveries and inventions and deepen the rationalist strain with Chinese culture. Vast segments of Chinese society will oppose this, but this is nothing a brutal civil war can't fix. The losers in this struggle will end up getting exterminated, and their ideology with it. Once the domestic struggles are over we'd end up with a very nasty atheist Chinese Empire pushing into Siberia and Tibet to destroy the barbarian fools once and for all...


re: Byzantium, I think it was more about "Roman-ness" than Orthodox-ness. Although the two became intertwined in their minds. But I doubt they would have looked upon an Ethiopian or a Russian (beyond their "cultured" rulers and priests) as one of their own. The Ottomans were closer to having a more religious identity for themselves than the Byzzies.
Can I make a suggestion for that "other"? I'm not sure exactly what they were like IOTL, but take a look at MNPundit's "Rapter of Spain" TL where the Qarmatians take over the Middle East and are basically atheists(or at least anti-abrahamic).

I don't know anything about them IOTL, but I liked the idea in his TL(which leads to a combined Crusade-Jihad) and it might be worth investigating a little.
 
One possibility might involve the Puritans getting wiped out by the New England natives, who spare the honest, fair-dealing Quakers and Baptists. (Until relatively recently, Baptists were very much in favor of Freedom of Religion...for all, even non-Baptists.)
Another possibility involves A Sikh empire spreading throughout India. Sikhs were relatively benevolent towards other religions- in some cases, Sikhs voluntarily protected other religions houses of worship until the present.
 
How about a Puritan, Leveler English Republic that introduces universal manhood suffrage early on and develops a 'liberal' political culture around the contours of their Puritan religion (so, they're all personally Puritan assholes, but willing to let others do as they please)?
 
Less successful (only hold sub-saharan Africa) but just as dickish Draka vs. the Randomoid Caliphate.

Bruce
 
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