| Islam also has the Sunnah and Hadith. Roman Catholicism does have a central human creature authority people can walk up to and ask questions, but the bishop of Rome is as fallible as any human creature, and Roman Catholics do not have to obey his edicts. Of the intra-Christian religious wars in the past, most conflict was between Roman Catholicism and pan-Protestantism, although there were limited cases of one Protestant denomination turning on another. So your seeming point that decentralization can lead to mass warfare as is happening in Iraq, and that the 'decentralization' is only on the part of Protestants and that the Roman Catholics weren't involved (the Reformation is called the Reformation because the Protest(ers)ants were trying to reform Roman Catholicism and bring the religion more in line with the Bible, the higher authority) seems off. Furthermore, as a secular case, there is American government. Sort of in place of Ratzinger is Bush (not quite; Bush is co-leader with Congress and the Supreme Court, but Bush has the most power concentrated in a single individual of the bunch), and in place of the Bible is the Constitution. The Constitution trumps the President as highest authority. Just as the Bible (and God) trumps any human creature as highest authority. To compare Islam and Christianity, it would be closer to link Roman Catholics with the Sunni, the pan-Protestants with the Shia, and the Orthodox with the Sufi, in terms of population size (though Sufi could beat out Shia, and could be more broken up as Protestants are broken up into many denominations) and historical internecine warfare. |