Jerusalem-based Christianity ignored

YOUR series on religion in modern Ireland (March 20/21) covered the many influences shaping religion, the standing of religion in today’s society and the opportunities of the Celtic Tiger bridging the wide gap with darker economic climes when one alternative to the emigrant boat had the consoling name of “vocation”.

However, I take issue with Conor Ryan’s history of Christianity.

Besides straying over the dividing line between religious belief and history, he also ignored the centuries of Jerusalem-based Christianity in which that religion poured out to the Roman Empire. The sees of Jerusalem, Byzantium, Rome and Alexandria were all equal in authority. The diversity of that period of “host Christianities” reflects much freedom of belief, but that was to change. And change it did when that religion became Roman-based.