I found the Aga Khan’s assessment of modern-day religions to be most interesting (“Politics of Pluralism,” Under the Elms, May/June). Differences in religious belief, as the Aga Khan noted, are accentuated by the vast increase in today’s availability of information. Such diversity of information is one of the major causes of religious extremism. Beginning with the Christian Crusades and retaliatory Moslem Jihads, increased information from a multitude of sources has led to ever-increasing theological diversification and extremism, which is leading to ever-greater worldwide conflicts. This has resulted in an increasing belief that religion is, at best, a zero-sum phenomenon. The same people who have created religion are those who are denigrating it. Formalized religion appears to be too much of a good thing. Radicalism is continually replacing religion’s teachings of righteousness.

John Perrine ’50
Lake Hopatcong, N.J.