Earlier this evening I was reading the commentary on 1 & 2 Kings in the evangelical Hill & Walton "A Survey of the Old Testament". They list eight factors which contributed to the eventual downfall of Solomon's kingdom. They read like the political bogeymen of the Christian right-wing in the US:

# Political allegiance to foreign nations

# Tendencies towards religious syncretism ("in an effort to appease" foreign residents)

# Administrative realignments ("a practice similar to 'gerrymandering' in modern politics")

# "The proliferation of state bureaucracy"

# "Lavish building projects" (shades of the New Deal, eh?)

# "The influx of pagan political and religious ideology...as a result of international trade and commerce"

# "The revolt of satellite states as Solomon's military power waned" (pity the poor Latin Americans)

# "...offset by increased taxation"

The suspicion towards foreigners and a centralised state, linked with the assumption that satellite states are there to be kept down by military might, is clearly laid bare. I'd commented on Hill & Walton's view of The Tower of Babel some weeks ago in "Merton's Quest".

"God then placed limitations on people's ability to unite by means of geographical dispersion and linguistic differentiation. This...restricted human ability to act in solidarity." (p98)

And there's John Bolton revealed in all his ugliness.

For forty years I've ignored Christianity as an irrelevance. I started this quest as a purely religious one; it seems to be bringing me full circle back to a need for activism.