[/SIZE]Who is to say that we ndns have items and practices not, "of the Lord."? Seems to me that everyone does because everyone has their lives divided into compartments with their beliefs and spirituality being just one of those compartments except for the traditional American Indian. With us traditional folk spirituality pervades into our whole lives ...(
Yvsa,
actually the American Indian-style spirituality is not unusual in the sense that it is really the common pattern for older religions (here Christianity, Islam, (and Buddhism even, though Buddhism is its own special case) are really rather 'new' religions). It is still the case to a large extent in Hinduism that religion is
not compartmentalised into a separate part of life. And it would have also been the case in the older European religions, such as the pre-Christian Germanic tradition(s).
I can think of at least two reasons why Christianity and Islam create a new pattern. One is the sort of monotheism they practice. This is what makes me feel uncomfortable about both religions (though, of course, I have friends from both of these): that they insist on a sole universal truth, a single god (making everyone else wrong). Polytheistic religions (or religions which are at least in principle polytheistic) seem to allow there to be multiple answers to questions, which can co-exist (even if they seem contradictory).
The second reason is that Christianity and Islam are not tied to a particular culture, at least in theory (in practice, of course, Islam is centred on the Middle-East, and Christianity in Europe), and so they have to be compartmentalisable in a certain sense, since they are designed for export to different cultures.
Treating Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism etc. all as 'religions' is a bit problematic since they don't actually really address the same issues. Christianity and Islam are akin.
Hinduism, for instance, is rather different from either of these - there really doesn't seem to be any central belief or creed which one would have to accept to be a Hindu. Nominally, one should accept the Vedas. Though I myself actually work very closely with the Vedas, the average Hindu might pay lip-service to the authority of the Vedas (and 'good' Hindus should at least know the Gayatri mantra by heart, which is taken from a Rigvedic hymn), but in practice the Vedas don't play a very central role in modern Hinduism (though they are certainly representative of the general culture in a way). And different Hindus might worship different gods, be polytheistic or a variety of monotheistic, etc.
Buddhism is different yet again, since the Buddha didn't actually talk about any god or gods. There are types of Buddhism which are atheistic (which should highlight the difficulty of calling Buddhism a 'religion' in the normal Western sense of 'religion'), there are other types (like the Nepalese) which are very close to Hinduism and interwoven with it.
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I sympathise with Wolf_1989 to a large extent. The problem is that I don't think that Christian kukri Guy is an isolated instance. There are a lot of so-called Christians like this. This isn't of course by any means to say that all or even most Christians are like that, but it is more widespread than isolated nuts on the internet (living, for the first time, in the American Midwest has made me all-too-aware of this..).
Of course, there are b*stards in every religion, even large groups of them -- for instance there are large groups of Hindu fundamentalists whose views I don't appreciate much either.
cheers,
B.
(Everyone knows the Russians will invade through Florida anyway. I saw it in a Chuck Norris movie.) 
