The "religious ghetto" is the Lutheran Church. As mainstream as you can get here. I am not saying that the intolerant or overzealous weren't there somewhere--but in my experience they aren't dominant to the exclusion of diversity of views or the abuse of children's independence of thought. All differences and conflicts considered: it is no way like what you describe as your experience.

Now now. I already wrote about this in the other sub-threads. She comes from the "ghetto" of northern Germany, where mostly Lutheran and to a great part grass-roots Christian groups participated in underground movements against the Third Reich, more recently participated heavily in the peace and anti-nuclear movements of the 1970s and 1980s, also played a major role in East German pro-democracy protests before Reunification, still form a major part of protests against neo-Nazi gatherings (often alongside communists), and are a loud voice on the side of refugees against xenophobes. The acrimony in the debate in this diary is because you in Britain and France and elsewhere have no local experience of such Christian public activism and are ignorant of it elsewhere (beyond Germany, I recall some similar examples in Italy and the USA), while Katrin seems ignorant of the fact that this type of Christian activism is not that typical elsewhere in Europe.

To add another regional flavour: in my region, there was also some contribution to pro-democracy movements around 1989 (more from the Catholic Church in Poland and more from small Protestant groups in Hungary for example), but since then, religion-based political activism is mostly several times uglier than in France, and even the social activism – that is, charity work, mostly with the homeless – doesn't go along with a social agenda but a didain for those helped. (I know Calvinist charity workers who took an overseas holiday on charity money and consider the needy whom they help sinners.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

He could have just told you that it was a mistranslation, and that it really should be something like "Thou shalt not commit manslaughter". And there are plenty of verses telling you the opposite (see Psalm 137:9 for one of the most notorious).