ABSTRACT
Roman Catholicism evolved significantly different cultures in the United States, Ireland, and St. Lucia. Despite the thingness qualities culture exhibits as a collective agreement, only individuals learn and individuals constitute the only respositors of cultural knowledge. Because cultures evolve, however, they make moving targets. Christianity thus emerged around 2,000 years ago as a failed messianic-military insurrection against Roman occupation, as Marvin Harris reminded us. The success of Christianity owed much to a message that offered salvation to individuals while not threatening political authority. Early Christianity evolved into Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy; Western Catholicism evolved into Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and many Protestant sects. The Protestant sects evolved into a dozens of varieties, from Methodism to Pentacostalism to Mormonism. Salafism evolved out of Sunni beliefs, and the current jihad-by-the-sword, which killed both Ayat and Rachel, evolved out of elements of both Sunni and Shi'a doctrine, the innovations Muhammad added to Judeo-Christian thought to make it distinctively Islamic.
