I actually agree with the gist your reply. For a religion that hammers home, time and time again, the worthlessness of worldly possessions, and the vain glories of the Earth, it is a fabulous irony to see it allied to closely with capitalism. Apologists merely cite the concept of an afterlife to justify indifference to worldly injustice. It has always been the same throughout history among the wealthy and the ruling classes. People will wheel out statistics supposedly demonstrating that the very wealthy are the most generous donators to charity, but it is a drop in an ocean of systemic inequality and largely a token gesture.

This brings to mind a gloriously Christian interpretation of the Bible on Fox News that the Cenk Uygur highlighted. Get a load of Lord Haw-Haw at 1:35:



[censored] your rights! This is Christianity! Who needs workers rights!? The wealth with percolate down. Trickle trickle.

On an entertaining note the hymn "All Things Bright and Beautiful", which I will guarantee 99% of British children born prior to 1990 will have sung at some point in their schooling, contains an excruciating verse that is now expurgated from hymn books:

Ain't it the truth, ain't it the truth.

For more evidence regarding just how non religious North America is, people can glance at...

List of Christian evangelist scandals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_evangelist_scandals

Now the section on Senate probe should not be on that page, because it paints those people listed as being wrong doers by association, when in fact they are just being investigated.

But in that list are televangelists who upon receiving the prayers of people they requested via TV, which is to be accompanied by a tithe, just threw the letters in the garbage without even reading them and pocketed the money, up to 60 million dollars worth in some cases.

The problem is abundantly clear. There are all types of people in this world, and almost anyone at some time, can do something very bad, the idea is that when they do, you punish them for their crimes.

Colin Powell may not be evil, to use one example, but if he was caught covering up atrocities that contravened the Geneva convention, he was guilty and should have been sentenced, and discharged disgraced etc.

[censored] Cheney, if he sold poison gas to Saddam, he should have gone to prison as well.

Richard Nixon, should not have gotten a pardon.

It goes on and on, where if you do not punish people for high crimes and white collar crimes, and false advertising, and fraud, and vote rigging and murder and genocide, then this is the world you get where you cannot tell the bad guys from the good guys and it is all worthless and corrupted.