I'm re-reading Dinty Moore's "The Accidental Buddhist." It shows the stark contrast between Buddhism and Catholicism in North America (it's from 1997, but this hasn't changed much). I should mention that I was raised in a house where no religion was ever mentioned, except (very rarely) as an intellectual discussion - perhaps from books that I was reading. I found my way to (philosophical, not religious) Buddhism on my own.

Dinty Moore on religious attitudes:

As a Catholic, it was pounded into my brain day after day that I belonged to "the one, true faith." Buddhists, on the other hand, tend to say, "Well, here is a way, not the way, but a pretty good one. See if it works for you."

And the contrast between sermons:

... Father O'Donnell didn't in any way seem to lift our burden - he seemed in fact to substantially add to it. On those rare Sundays when I did pay attention to what he did say, I was routinely paralyzed between fear and guilt. "You are a greedy little child, and you are going to end up in Hell because of it." Geshe-la's sermon, on the other hand, made my burden seem lighter, or at least tried to suggest a way that the burden-lifting might happen. In my experience, Catholicism seems focused on what we do wrong, what we will do wrong, and the bad things that will probably occur as a result, whereas Buddhism seems more clearly focused on the positive in us, and how to bring that positiveness more forward.

This experience of the religions depends which continent you're on - if you grew up in Thailand, it would be a given that you would be a Buddhist, and Christianity would be the tiny minority religion. And certainly, there are hard-core militant Buddhist groups, but the view of the scriptures presented by Moore's quotes above is fairly accurate.