I think that what you can conclude from that is that if Christianity has failed – it is because of human failings.

Have you considered addressing the problem to the manufacturer? You watch over the sheep you have, not the sheep you wish you had.

Perhaps you believe Christianity is a religion for angels, and not for the human ape. I’m pretty sure that every ideologue has fretted that their apostles don’t listen, don’t comprehend and rather just get stoned.

Contemporary Christians in power don’t seem too irritated by folks like Archbishop Chrysostom, St. More and St. Basil. I suppose having oodles of money doesn’t hurt.

I don’t think “successful” is quite the word we ought to be using here.

Yet failure is. I think Jesus’ messages of peace are as well received today as they would have been if he never made them. It’s still a controversy and a subject of debate as to whether the Church has done more harm than good.

I think Jesus’ success lies in the fact that his words are still widely known today

To be fair, Mark’s and Constantin’s words of what Jesus allegedly said are widely known today.

And if you think that Jesus is successful then you must also believe that the Hellenic narrative is equally successful, as well as the Wotanic narrative. Beware of wooden horses and duck down.

Shakespeare’s words are used colloquially in everyday speech, without our even knowing it originated from him.

Speaking of ancient traditions, until the late (late) twentieth century sailing women were forbidden on the grounds that Neptune still held a grudge against Minerva and would send his monsters to capsize any vessel crewed with women (despite the fact that we have many stories of factual female pirates who not once encountered a Kraken or Leviathan in their careers). Only recently has the US Navy allowed women to serve on ships. Not sure if they’re yet allowed on submarines, though.

It’s possible for us to know about ancient traditions and still not follow them. And contemporary Christians, at least as I’ve seen them in the US and UK are pretty hot for war, even when there are plenty of other perfectly secular reasons to not go to war.

US and UK Christians are also pretty hot to kill gays, or at least marginalize them based on religious expression. You don’t see the same fervor coming from us secularists.

The US constitution is one part of [Christian] outworking

Do tell. In what specific parts of the US Constitution does Christianity figure? If I recall my new testament correctly it is pretty big on feudalism, heretical monarchy and the divine right of kings.

And if I recall my Constitution correctly there’s not much in the way of God or divinity.

The general rejection of the death penalty…

Was moved forward by Islam sooner than Christianity, hence the common expression of Allah the merciful — that’s not ironic. The Vatican conceded against the death penalty after secular efforts towards penal reform after the Bloody Code in which almost everything was punished by hanging.

And everyone still treats prisoners like shit, even though most of our convicts (in the US) are either dubiously convicted (under presumption of guilt) or convicted for victimless crimes, mostly smoking pot. I haven’t heard much from any religious sect regarding prison reform.

You really seem to hate those US evangelicals

I’m not very fond of UK conservative Christians either, and both of them have wended their way into the political system to then abuse their privilege and to enshrine into law favoritism of their own versus the other people.

Granted, I also don’t like very many of the Islamic sects that I’ve encountered, who dress their women up in burqas and hide them away, marry nine-year-old little girls to grown men (and then demand of them marital duties) and execute gays, apostates and those who speak questionably of Muhammad, the Koran or Islam. Muslims are not without their own crimes against humanity, but to say it’s a problem with Islam alone is to fail to recognize the deeper roots of the problem.

I also don’t like Buddhists who believe that our hardships in this life are thanks to sins in prior lives, as they often to use this to justify ill treatment of the poor. Even the Dali Lama disparaged victims of natural disaster based on this supposition.

I’m also not very fond of the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox both of whom have shown their hatred for women and gays is greater than their hatred for poverty and famine.

I do like the Leadership Conference of Women Religious since they seem to have their priorities more in line, but that may change once the Holy Inquisition is done with them (that is the CDF. They don’t call themselves the Inquisition anymore for obvious reasons).

I also like those Unitarians that I’ve encountered, and those Quakers that congregate near here. They seem to have a more modernized way to view scripture and how it should be utilized in the twenty-first century. Also, they’re not much liked by the big churches such as the SBC and RCC.

I also find there are independent Scientologists who’ve used Hubbard’s work to find their own center. Also neopagans and new-agers who seem to have found a working balance of spirit and materialism.

As I said elsewhere, it’s not religion or Christianity that I don’t like, it’s bigotry. And while I understand that bigotry is to some degree unavoidable — that the human ape is often compelled to separate society into us and them — that it is ultimately wrong for us to enshrine such feelings into law or policy. We’ve tried systems of government which allow for gross inequality. They have always resulted in terrible atrocity.

And no I don’t have the solution. But I know that Jesus didn’t either, which lends a hefty amount of doubt to the question of whether he was a savior, infallible or divine (given someone who was any of these things would supposedly know better the nature of the flock they were shepherding). And it lends a hefty amount of doubt that Islam is the problem, but a symptom of the problem. It’s justification for bad behavior, not the cause.