Have you (either Melanie or David) read Eric Hoffer�s �The True Believer�? His idea is that all mass movements, whether political, nationalist or religious, have a lot more similarities than differences. They all start with a man of words (Christ, Marx, Gandhi, even Hitler) who sets forth a creed. Then fanatics adopt the creed and, if they�re lucky, expand the new belief until they topple the old order and set up a new order in its place. Then practical men of action take over and govern. If the right types of leaders don�t appear at the right time, or if the social conditions are wrong, the new movement fails, eventually being forgotten or at best becoming a footnote.
If that�s the case, Christ�s original message was doomed to be perverted if Christianity was to survive. There were many branches of early (and later) Christianity that stayed close to the original ideals but in the long they couldn�t compete with the organized religion. Practicality, including items like greed and lust for power, came into conflict with quaint ideals and practicality won. The only solace is that some people continue to find the original values and act on them on their own.
And as you noted, David, that�s true of all belief systems. The people who eventually run large organizations develop agendas that have nothing to do with the concepts they supposedly support.

Me, I�m an atheist but I don�t care what anybody else believes, as long as they�re not pushy about it.