Christ Jesus' guidelines have been judged impractical because difficult to obey. The falterings of his followers have been taken as proof enough that the Sermon on the Mount is too lofty to apply to real people.

But Christianity persists, in spite of its abusers. It survives all the perilous times. The Kingdom of God is not conquered, damaged, or displaced. It is always safely within—as Jesus said it would be—within consciousness centering more on God, less on self.

Thus Vine Deloria's indictments [in "God is Red"] are not new; his alternatives are. He finds American Christians bumbling and hypocritical; cruel, inane, and rootless. Rootless. That's his key. American Christians have no spiritual unity with the land on which their religion is practiced. American Indians do. Their religions will lead the way out of empty Christian worship, he maintains….

How this reformation of the Christian in America...