Democracy existed before Christianity

In a recent letter to the editor, the writer asserts, "Democracy can't exist without the underpinning of Christianity because it is an offshoot of the belief that all people are equal because God gave them all the same human nature, and the same human rights and duties. This idea was foreign to the world before Christ's coming ..."

Athens was a democracy 500 years before Christ's coming, and it was not the only one of the 1,500 Greek city-states that was.

Granted, women and slaves did not vote, but the same was true for significant parts of our constitutional history.

On the other hand, divine right, as least in the Western World, could not exist without exaggerating "an offshoot of the belief" that the divine powers of the Prophet Samuel were still anointing the chosen to be king.

Lou Eisenberg

Buffalo Grove