You should read N.T.Wright's "The Resurrection of the Son of God." He does a great job of putting early Christian teachings in the context of Hellenistic philosophy. Christ's teachings were profoundly different than Socrates'. It's a good read too by a major theologian and historian.
I'm not a Christian nor a Jew, so my opinion of the New Testament differs from yours.
The New Testament says what it says. You don't have to be a believer to understand the worldview there. All you have to do is spend some time studying it, regardless of your political or religions affiliation. So I'm not sure what you mean by having a different opinion. Do you mean that my description of the New Testament worldview is wrong? Or that you don't believe Jesus was resurrected? Or something else?
My concern is the political situation we now find ourselves in. The GOP is becoming a Religious party representing fundamentalist Christians. This is political suicide for the GOP.
Just a couple of points. Nothing I have said in my posts is particularly 'fundamentalist.' I am not a fundamentalist. But, here my Catholic friends on the thread may be able to help, I don't think my post 15 is at all inconsistent with Roman doctrine. It was a pretty straightforward statement of stuff that folks who study the New Testament really don't have much of an argument about.
That said, I too think it would be a mistake to turn the Republican party into Pat Robertson's party--many good conservatives are not Christians. Similarly, it would be a mistake for the Republican party to drive off the Christians, as we comprise well over half the party. Christians have a lot in common with conservatives. The reason for that is that the conservative worldview is, in my opinion, derived directly from the Christian worldview. And conservatives share many values with the Republican party.
Part of what you are seeing is that the dems have become the home of fundamentalist humanists, if you will. In their zeal to drive Christianity out of the public square and believing Christians out of policy making, they have provoked a backlash that has come, primarily from the Republicans. For the most part, that conflict has helped the Republicans as many values voters who used to be democrats have seen what their party actually stands for and have started to vote Republican. In fact, we probably won the 2004 election because we were successful with believing Catholics on values issues. OTOH, clowns like Pat Robertson have hurt the party.
Another part of what you are seeing is that the formerly democrat south is now Republican. There are a lot more believing Christians in the South, percentage wise, than elsewhere. That has been another reason the secular vs Christian split between the two parties has become so pronounced. A large number of the believing Christians have left the democrat party over the past twenty years.
So as a practical matter, believing Christians are disproportionately represented in the Republican party vs the dems. Because the parties represent their members, that has changed both parties and has made the values differences more stark.
For the Rockefeller Republicans and business Republicans, that is uncomfortable as they are both humanist and their main interest seems to me to be the facilitation of being free to make money--the culture issues are less important to them. That's because their worldview is a different kind of humanism than the dems. But it is humanism and so they really have no home. The dems don't want them because they believe in economic freedom but they are uncomfortable with the Christian worldview so don't feel at home in the Republican party.
There's no easy realignment of the parties that fixes that.