Martin Marty, one of the world’s pre-eminent historians of religion, opened a national conference on religious pluralism here Thursday night by invoking the words of Voltaire, the satirical and anti-Christian French writer of the 18th century.
“If there were only one religion in England, there would be danger of tyranny,” Voltaire wrote. “If there were two, they would cut each other’s throats; but there are 30, and they live happily together in peace.”
….The conference is being put on by the Lubar Institute for the Study of Abrahamic Religions, which is part of the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.