I am highly disturbed by the strident full-page advertisement on Jan. 30 flogging David Horowitz' s new book, "Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America." He is correct, of course, that "Judeo-Christian values are at the very root of America's democracy and success."

What this conservative pundit fails to point out, however, is that Christianity is being eroded not so much by "the radical left" as by conservative Christians — a pusillanimous clergy and laity who have emptied out the churches by claiming a divine mandate and insisting on the literal truth and spiritual validity of stories and doctrines that reflect ancient and medieval worldviews no longer taken seriously by thinking people.

In fact, the dangerous liberals he impugns are for the most part the very people who seek to preserve the authentic radical teachings of Jesus by following his example in their condemnation of a modern power structure which, all too much like that of first-century Rome, lives by perpetuating inequity and injustice.

Tom Hall, Foster