Jim, I think the problem is in the refusal to throw off the baggage of the medieval mindset. You may stop reading here and say that the Church is the baggage of the medieval mindset, but it doesn't have to be. The conflation of the church with the authority structure probably dates from Constantine the Great, often it is thought that Constantine introduced Christianity to the west, but he did no such thing. He appropriated Christianity as part of his power structure, and it has remained so to this day. After him, the schism between Rome and Byzantium, in 1054, all the business with Henry VIII and his daughters, right down to the seats of the bishops in the house of lords, these are examples of Christianity being manipulated by people of power, not the other way round. The problems in Ireland for goodness sake, and you know more about this from first hand than me. And people of power need wars. The problem that the church has, and there are many honourable exceptions, is in refusing to reject that explicitly. And I don't mean a particular church, all of them, or most of them, with exceptions such as the Quakers, such as Bonhoffer, such as Huddleston.