Poor Aelfie - not only are the Italian trains late, but it is also a hard life being a Christian - and Yes, you are right, it is much easier to be nasty to Christians than to Muslims, Hindus, Jews, etc. Similarly, it is much easier to be nasty to Americans, and even Brits, than to many other people. Think of it as the heavy price of success (sometimes long passed - e.g. for the Brits)!

I was in Japan three weeks ago and they have a wonderfully relaxed religion (a mix of Shintoism and Buddhism) - no 'services', no coherent doctrine; but a lot of shrines where one can get useful help (e.g. one where one can refresh one's credit card by dipping it in a sacred spring).

But you are also right that religion - even Christianity (!) - isn't all bad. It is, for instance, worth remembering that - for better or worse - 'Europe' is really 'old Christendom'; and the making of Europe as a single cultural identity was largely done peacefully (though not entirely - e.g. the 'Reconquista' in Iberia; the Teutonic Knights in the Baltic).

Re Amory's book: it is VERY clever and has a lot of interesting stuff in it - but in my opinion it is silly (to use another technical scholarly term). A case of looking so hard at the trees that he can't see the wood. He argues that that wasn't really any difference between 'Goths' and 'Romans' - but he has to do some very fancy footwork to explain away the abundant evidence of real difference (e.g. language). If you are interested, I discuss Amory in the fourth chapter of my book - the Theoderic's moustache stuff.