Quotes from Graham E. Fuller

Above all, we will see how intimately linked all these doctrinal struggles were to the politics of the great empires. Power invariably attracts religion, and religion attracts power. Theology is secondary.

Some reconstructionists argue that Christian clerics should be in charge of government, similar to Iran's theocracy, or rule by clerics.

When asked his opinion of the French Revolution, Chinese Premier Zhou En-Lai in the 1950s famously remarked, "It's too early to tell.

But refusal to acknowledge even this minimalist state religion alongside one's own personal religion was taken as an act of rejection of the state, an act of rebellion.

Just as many Muslims believe that one day—simply due to its innate doctrinal superiority—Islam may ultimately become the religion of all mankind, so do reconstructionists believe that one day Christianity will be acknowledged by all and will thus come to dominate the world. Imposition by force is undesirable, unnecessary, and counterproductive to the longer goal; it will simply come.

For the state, theology is too important to be left to the theologians.

For reconstructionists, tolerance is not a neutral concept that acknowledges equal validity of all religious belief before the law; instead, they speak of a "Christian tolerance" that permits equal treatment but not equal acceptance of all doctrine. Reconstructionists would not seek to regulate personal beliefs, but would regulate public actions and behavior.

They had one all-important goal: to ensure that church and state maintained sole monopoly over doctrine.

However functional at the time, the idea of administering the state through religiously based communities strikes the contemporary observer as outmoded, the product of a different, more religious age. Yet, what then should the basis of identity be within the state? Ethnicity (language) or religion?

Jews also did not accept the idea that mankind can be saved through the sacrifice of Jesus, or by anyone else, but only through righteous living, as prescribed by Jewish Law.

Thus, in a world without Islam, the much harsher Jewish critique of Jesus, as expressed in Judaism, still stands.

Islam, believing that Jesus was only a physical being and not a divinity, shares the view that Jesus only seemed to die on the cross, but was saved by God and taken to heaven.

The view was thus declared heretical in 416 CE. Islam, too, denies the validity of original sin and of mankind's inherent sinfulness.

Sayyid Ali Amin said that the Lebanese Shi'ite Hizballah movement was attempting to stop discussion of the thesis of clerical rule in Iran, because challenging this ideology would undermine Hizballah's own power in Lebanon. "This is the biggest proof that [clerical rule] is not part of religious beliefs, but it is a power and political ideology," he said.

While Byzantium drew its deepest identity from the belief that it was perpetuating the true tradition of the Roman Empire, it increasingly came to view the Western Church as a geopolitical rival whose power was ultimately as threatening to Byzantine power and identity as Islam itself. The Middle East was thus quite capable, without Islam, of developing aversion to the West.

It would assume that bilateral problems could be worked out through goodwill, active diplomacy and transparency rather than suspicions and a search for "enemies.

While Islam indeed established a new political order, we are not talking about a brand-new religion, new gods, or new perceptions of morality. If there had been no Islam, the world would have been less rich culturally and intellectually, but the cultural and theological groundwork of thinking in the Middle East might not have been vastly different.

Rome's subsequent establishment of a papacy in place of the Rome patriarchate was a further effort to extend its credentials over the "lesser" ranks of patriarchs in the major Christian centers to the East. This issue of preeminence persists even today.

Preservation of orthodoxy seems to emerge as a supreme and contentious problem for all three monotheistic faiths, far more so than for other major world religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, or Confucianism. This may be partly due to the fact that the monotheistic religions are "revealed," that is, they are believed to have existed eternally and preexist the exact moment of revelation to their prophets. There is less room for flexibility on doctrine.

Indeed, the Catholic Church insisted on maintaining Latin as the sole liturgical language until the twentieth century—even though the New Testament had originally been written in Greek.)

Power, then, is the final trap, the ultimate corrupter: the closer religion becomes linked with state power, the further it drifts away from the realm of intellect and spirit and into the realm of the political—with direct implications for state power and authority. The state cannot then be indifferent to theology. When the state's official beliefs and doctrines are challenged, the state's authority itself is challenged—and the state does not look kindly upon it.

Yet of course nationalism is always "imagined"; identity is what you think you are.

Even in collapse, Byzantines maintained such resentment against Rome that they actually came to feel it was better to be defeated by the Muslim Turks than by the Christian Latins.

Many Orthodox are still fully convinced of their real superiority toward other peoples and of their salvific [redemptive] mission in the world." The same could be said of many Muslims' belief that Islam, too, can one day serve to rescue a morally rudderless and foundering West.