Reply #3: Very insightful

[HamdenRice]

I think that when a regime tells ordinary people in an authoritarian way, "you can't do this," a certain number of people will do it out of a spirit of rebelliousness.

What's striking about the language of the document, however, is how the writer had to convince himself and his readers not just that the suppression campaign was working, but that people were enthusiastically embracing the mass movement against religion.