"What brand of Christianity would America be if it became a full-blown Christian theocracy with a King James Bible as its constitution?" Roy joked.

"American Christianity is a multi-headed beast of its own. You have Prosperity Gospel teachers who teach their congregations that God wants you to be rich and happy and fulfilled. You have Charismatics who speak in tongues and claim that they experience prophetic visions, can heal people, and speak in tongues. You have Baptists who believe you get saved because you believe on Jesus and pray a prayer. You have Calvinists who believe that God only died for some people and that they have to be totally committed to God and Jesus in every area of life and persevere to the end as proof that you were truly saved. You have Arminians who believe humans can get saved and put their faith on Jesus of their own free will, but that they can also walk away and lose their salvation." Bree rambled. "It would be a messy one for sure."

"Main difference from Islam is that contemporary Christians will hurl insults and pronounce hell and damnation on the other side. But they won't come after you and bomb your church or synagogue like Muslims are known to do in Europe." Shelly said.

"Don't Muslims have their own denominational conflict? Sunni and Shia, was it? They literally go to war with one another over it. Some Muslim countries like Iraq or Libya are socialist and secular. But others like Saudi Arabia are super strict and will stone to death if you convert to another religion and force women to cover their faces in public." Leslie shuddered.

"And also allow men to have multiple wives." Amy snapped. "Don't forget that."

"Old Testament patriarchs like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob also had kids from more than one woman, I may add. Plenty of Asian and African countries allowed it prior to the introduction of Christianity into their countries. Chinese and Koreans also used to allow polygamy because families needed a son to carry the name." Bree said.

"My Korean co-worker has a grandfather who has three half-brothers in North Korea." Amy said.

"What's their religion called again? Don't the North Koreans have their own homegrown religion where they worship their president as a god king?" Roy asked.

"I think it's called Juche or Songun. My Korean friend said it's a weird mix of Communism, Socialism, Confucianism, monarchy, and Christianity." Amy said.

"Doesn't South Korea have a lot of Christians?" Bree asked.

"The north used to have more but they came south when the war started. The north technically allows you to be Christian, but you can't go door to door and convert people and you can only worship at state-run churches." Amy said.

"What about Japan?" Leslie asked.

"Japan is Shinto and Buddhist. I don't know anything about Shinto, but they supposedly believe the Japanese Emperor is the direct descendant of the sun goddess or something like that. He is supposed to be divine." Amy said.

"You know all this talk reminds me of something that Christians constantly say in debates with skeptics. You know what it is?" Leslie remembered.

"You mean the one where they say everyone knows God exists deep down, but that he or she doesn't want to acknowledge it?" Terry answered.

"Yes! That one." Leslie laughed.

"I'd ask that person how do you, a stranger, know that I know that God exists? Secondly, what God are you referring to? The one in your Bible? Allah from the Quaran? Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita? Any one of the hundreds or thousands of gods and goddesses or demigods or nature spirits that European pagan or Native American folk religions follow?" Shelly asked. "How do you KNOW that your God is the right one? Shouldn't you be safe and cover all your bases by studying them all?"

"Most humans and cultures throughout recorded history believed in some sort of God and creation story and afterlife with a very small minority being atheist. It's one thing to say that humans know that God is real. It's another to claim that we know that the one in the Bible is the real one. Would some uncontacted tribesman who has never been in contact with any of the major world religions looking up at the night sky and observing creation around him conclude that the God who made all things is the same one in your Bible? Of course, not." Leslie said.

"Well, my uncle would say that is why God sends missionaries to preach the word to all the corners of the earth and get them saved." Terry said.

"Why does God need us to tell everyone he is real if everyone already knows that he is real because he is supposedly self-evident?" Leslie asked.

"He'd say we know he is real, but stand condemned until we hear and believe."

"Condemned for what?" Leslie asked.

"For a lot of things. Worshipping other gods. Offering pagan sacrifices to stone idols and what not." Terry said.

"But your God is the one who decided a child would be born into a non-Christian country where the Christian religion could possibly be banned." Shelly said.

"To that, my uncle would say it's not your business to ask why God declared so and so to be born in a non-Christian country because God is sovereign and does what he wants to do with his creation regardless." "But we are responsible if we don't preach the Gospel to somebody and he goes to hell?" Shelly asked.

"That's right." Terry said.

"Except those very same people would have gone to hell anyway because of original sin and because Jesus didn't die for them, according to your uncle." Roy said.

"Guys, this is honestly pointless." Terry sighed, looking up at the clock. It was now almost midnight.

"I apologize. I'm the one who brought this up in the first place." Bree admitted.

"No! Not at all! I'm actually happy you did. I think more people should talk about these sorts of things. This country is a big island if you think about it. We are bordered with Canada and Mexico. Most Americans haven't even been overseas before. We are separated on both sides by oceans." Chuck said.

"I seriously doubt a world where everyone is a Christian would be better than the one that we have today considering the vast majority of humans that ever lived are not Christian and even those who do profess Christ aren't exactly a single homogenous lot. You have Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, Egyptian Coptic, Baptists, Methodists, Charismatics, Calvinists, Arminian, Mormons, Jehovah's Witness, and the whole 100 yards." Roy said. "It's like referring to Black people in this country as African American even though most Black Americans haven't been to Africa and are just as American and Western as we are. Even if he is from Africa, Africa is a huge continent with thousands of languages and tribes."

"Or calling Europeans White even though not all Europeans are fair skinned." Shelly said. "I've seen Koreans who are pasty white and Black people who are tan."

"Or Asians. Why is that word seemingly used to refer to people in Eastern Asian countries like China, Korea, Japan, Philippines, or Thailand? Russians can technically be considered Asian since most of Russia is actually part of the Asian continent." Bree said.

"I don't Chinese people are homogeneous either. Some Chinese people are very tall and pale skinned, but other Chinese people are short and brown-skinned. Some of their language variants are so different that someone in Beijing wouldn't be able to understand a guy from Hong Kong from what I heard." Leslie said.

"Mandarin and Cantonese use the Chinese script but they say the same word differently, I believe." Terry said. "Chinese is a tonal language where the pitch used to say a word makes the same word completely different. Mandarin only has 4 tones, but Cantonese has something like 6 to 9. I believe that is what Jackie Chan said somewhere in an interview when someone asked him the difference."

"By the way, guys. What was that British professor who got fired from Oxford because he did a whole study where he said Australian Aborigines have an average IQ of 60?" Roy asked.

"NOPE! Not opening that can of worms today, Parson." Chuck laughed, having had enough of their extremely long banter. "Alright guys. It's midnight and I assume we all have to go to work tomorrow morning."

The others laughed and all stood up to leave and go home for the night.