Divided by God

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/opinion/sunday/douthat-in-2012-no-religious-center-is-holding.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 7:20 AM
Subject: re: Divided by God
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:
  As is now standard, mr. Douthat knows what he wants to conclude, and makes up an idiosyncratic history to justify his ends.  His claim that "Americans have never separated  religion from politics" is risible.  Our founding fathers carefully stripped all sectarian markers from their public speech and from our foundational documents because they or their fathers had fled persecution by one church or another.
     To go deeper, his characterization of the Church of LDS as "the ultimate outsider church" is to mock Christianity itself.  The ultimate outsider church challenged Rome's dominion over the individual's soul. For this, Jesus was crucified. But even in the eternal city, there are changes. The Rome that martyred so many Christians under Hadrian embraced the Church under Constantine. That didn't change the nature of the Roman empire, but it has changed Christianity forever.