The answer to Rick's mini-quiz must be unitarians.

Just to be clear, Ecclesiasticus, which Nicole cited way up the thread, is one of the books that make up what many protestants term the Apocrypha. These apocryphal books, all written in Greek, were largely concerning the period between those covered by the two testaments, and were not deemed part of the canon by the Early Church.

Augustine wanted them counted in, and eventually one of the church councils that periodically sat (Trent, 1546) went along with this. By then of course the church was split, and the writ of these councils ran only in the catholic church. The catholic church calls the apocryphal books deuterocanonical.

Ecclesiasticus is not to be confused with Ecclesiastes, mentioned in Nicole's last post. This is an old testament book, not new, as Nicole (maybe accidentally) implied.

Thanks for an interesting thread Nicole. I would just caution that in many ways (not least attitude to women) is is not realistic to bundle all of the Christian strands together, as you seem to be doing. On some of your questions, different strands would return different answers. Also I'm not sure that it's right to count islam in the western religions, and some western religions have been overlooked as others have said. (Including that whole area of "western guru" religion around the theosophists and their successors.)

Apropos of nothing in particular, I've always wondered about Jesus. Do believers hold that he pre-existed his birth on earth - ie was he always part of the triumvirate up there, or was he created specifically to be slaughtered? If the latter, it doesn't seem much of a sacrifice. It would have been better if his father had sacrificed something he'd always cherished.