And post-Constantine political power has been the monopoly...

And post-Constantine political power has been the monopoly of the state and/or the Church organization, rather than easily accessible by individuals with messianic pretensions.

The nature of Jesus' earthly departure-the Ascension, in full view of his disciples-and the statement by two angels to the people there that "this same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way…." (Acts of the Apostles 1:10, 11), has made it rather difficult-but not impossible-for anyone to claim the Messianic mantle in Christian history.

There are no doubt a host of socio-economic, psychological and political factors that could be considered, as well; but those will have to wait for another time and paper. Finally, let me reiterate that just because specific examples of militant "christist" leaders are few and far between, this does not mean that Christianity lacks an expansionist, sometimes militant, fervor; quite the contrary.

The Gospel of Matthew ends with the resurrected Jesus saying "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…." (Matthew 28:18ff). For many of Jesus' followers over the last 2,000 years, that directive has been enough to drive Christian expansion, even in the absence of a militant messianic figure.

And of course the bulk of Islamic expansion had taken place over the last 14 centuries not at the behest of self-styled mahdis but simply out of the Islamic mandate to da`wah as carried out by rulers, traders, Sufis, imams, `ulama and ordinary Muslims. To return to an earlier theme: there are two Western visions of a pan-global ideology: Christianity and Secularism. While the former, the idea of a global Christendom, is largely moribund the latter is not.

Secularism developed in the wake of the 18th century "Enlightenment" and, to vastly oversimplify, its two major aspects were the separation of church and state, and 2) an almost unbridled faith in science and technology to cure all society's ills. Of course, there is a great deal of overlap between the Christianity of Western countries (particularly the U.S.) and Secularism, since the latter sprang from the former. But whereas in the U.S.

itself there is a great deal of tension between pious Christians of many denominations and the Secularist worldview, in much of the rest of the world the two appear often to be coterminous.