fprince - I should probably point out that I make a distinction between christianity & christers. I've several good friends who are very committed christers. One, who I spent yesterday evening with, devoutly believes in the "4,500 years old, no dinosaurs" business, & he's an engineer building missiles for the British defence establishment! Naturally I take the piss out of him, you have to! ;-) He goes "Yah! Boo! Sucks! What do you know?!" in return. As you have to! :-)

But when you look at it from the dogmatic, theological perspective, it has to be "save them from themselves". The Jehovah's Witness p-o-v, from a logical (internally logical!) standpoint, is actually quite correct. I dunno about "at sword-point" (to paraphrase a little), that's been obsolete for most of the major denominations for some time. But there are those fanatics (not denominations, necessarily, but certainly the sort of individual who will e.g. shoot abortion doctors) for whom it is still true. An awful lot of people have died in the name of religion, the vast majority in the name of monotheist religions who, inevitably, must all worship the same god...