Religion

and I think Christianity arose from Jewish resistance to Roman fusion of state power with state religion

But because I returned to Christianity from an atheist position, drawn by Marxist readings of the Bible and church history, and I have appreciated the dialectical tension -- between atheist skepticism with the often material nature of practical ethics, as opposed to a confused naive idealism and the psychological importance of hope in hopeless situations --- I always find myself philosophically oscillating between my mythical desires and my conviction that transcendent beliefs are often (but not always) counter-productive

The actual details must be sorted out constamtly and imperfectly, in the living of life