“Religion is never benign”
-- College classmate
One of my college classmates is an aggressive atheist, and has a mantra, “Religion is never benign.” She uses the phrase frequently to accompany anti-religious memes on Facebook. She is unkind toward expressions of faith and publicly disparages religious posts by other classmates. In her view, religion is entirely harmful, and should be opposed in every venue.
I disagree with my classmate in the straightforward meaning of her mantra. Clearly, there are many times that religion has prompted people to act kindly toward others. Sacred texts from most faiths have some expression of the Golden Rule, urging believers to treat other people as well as they hope to be treated themselves. It’s a foundational concept of justice. Christianity charges its faithful to serve the poor, to uplift those who are suffering, to forgive offenses, not to lie or cheat, and generally behave as a decent human being. Islam requires its faithful to do the same, and to never turn away someone who is hungry. Judaism has the expression “tikkun olam” – to heal the world, that is considered by many Jews to be the core of their faith. Eastern religions have their own precepts on making the world better.
But looking at history and current events, harm from religion is also evident. We should ask whether religion does more harm than good. Are the apparent good deeds done in the name of religions outweighed by the negative impacts on society? Let’s consider some of the negatives associated with religion.
In Christianity, there is a lot of baggage in the Old Testament which contradicts the love expressed in the New Testament. Christianity does not repudiate the Old Testament, with its agenda of genocide, tribalism, misogyny, intolerance and authoritarianism. Rather, modern American Christianity has doubled down on the repressive laws of the Old Testament, and used those to justify modern bigotry, just as slave owners before the Civil War used the Bible (both testaments) to justify slavery. Conservative Christians use the briefest mention of homosexuality to justify their bigotry, but ignore nearly adjacent verses advocating religious violence. If Christians are to strictly enforce Deuteronomy 22:5, prohibiting cross-dressing, will they someday enforce Deuteronomy 13, 12-17, commanding genocide against those who worship other gods? I discussed problematic Bible verses at length in previous posts, so I won’t repeat myself. I will just say that the Bible contains directives that are deeply unjust according to modern values.
Violent History
The second problem is the history of religion. I will discuss Christianity, because I know it best, but religious wars and persecution occurred across all cultures. The process by which Christianity spread across Scandinavia and Eastern Europe was horrific. After a few key leaders adopted Christianity, those who opposed conversion were tortured and killed. One of the most significant leaders was Olaf Tryggvason of Norway. Olaf sent missionaries to Greenland and Iceland, but within his own country used forced conversion through means such as exile, hostage taking, mutilation, torture, and death for those who refused as well as destroying pagan temples” (Wiikipedia). The godson of Olaf Tryggvason, King Olaf II Haraldsson, was canonized as Saint Olaf, but by contemporary accounts was a brutal and violent ruler.
I recall seeing an item of ancient religious art in a convent in Russia, showing a saint overseeing the conversion of a population, while one who opposed the conversion was shown impaled on a spike. The forced conversion of American Natives by conquistadors was in the same vein. The idea that Christianity was about kindness was not part of the deal during the spread of Christianity around the world.
Religious wars are an inseparable part of religious history. Biblical wars, the Crusades, Islamic wars of conquest, Papal wars, the 16th century French wars of religion, and eastern wars were driven by the question of what religion would be observed in the land. There were sometimes ethnic or nationalistic aspects to the conflicts, but religion was a key component.
Religious persecution is also part of religious history. The torments of the Catholic inquisitions defined an entire period of European history, and stifled the development of science in renaissance Catholic Europe after Galileo. European and American witch trials were another horror of religious history. The partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 led to huge massacres of and torture of innocent people. Estimates of the number of people who departed their homes, but never arrived in their new country range from 2.2 million to 3.2 million people. Today, on a smaller scale, religious and ethnic genocide continues in Armenia, Gaza, Myanmar, Xinjiang China, Somalia and recently Rwanda. In Russia, the Orthodox church requires priests to pray for military victory and the subjugation of Ukraine.
What can we conclude about the long history of religious conflict and repression? Somehow the kindness in the sacred texts doesn’t diminish the violence. In fact, religion often seems to justify the violence. Common soldiers are promised benefits in the afterlife, whether they are Russian infantrymen, Japanese kamikaze pilots, Islamic suicide bombers, etc.
Historian (and deeply religious author) Thomas Cahill claims that human sacrifice was a feature of every culture prior to the arrival of Christianity. Human sacrifices, for religious or spiritual purposes, do seem to be ubiquitous in early cultures. Several cultures of Meso-Americans ritually murdered prisoners, bronze-age Europeans ritually murdered select individuals in northern Europe and Spain, Vikings sacrificed people to protect new ships, and in cultures as widely separated as Japan and the Balkans, maidens were buried alive in the foundations of new buildings. Scythians, Mongols, Egyptians and Meso-Americans murdered and buried wives and servants of leaders, to serve the deceased leader in the afterlife. Celts and other cultures murdered victims for divination of the future. Middle Eastern cultures sacrificed infants to the gods. All of this violence was based on false beliefs about spirits, gods, and the afterlife. Where would humanity be today, if not for false beliefs?
Absolutism
Religions, especially monotheistic religions, generally claim to be absolute truth. There’s no discussion, reasoning, argument or rebuttal with the sacred texts, the church, or the clergy. To question sacred documents, their interpretation, or the leaders of the church is to question God himself. The aura of infallibility is considered to be transferred from God to the representatives of the church. To oppose those officials is to commit the crime of heresy.
Many Christians are taught that the Bible is the inspired word of God. A religious injunction carries absolute authority for the faithful. No personal judgment is allowed. There’s no Nuremburg example of orders that should be disobeyed. Faithful Christians set aside their own rational moral judgment to accept the precepts of the Bible – the commandments of God. And they become absolutely unreasoning in civil discourse about various human rights. An absolutism takes hold, and it cannot be reasoned with and cannot be changed. Why? Because it is founded in a belief that God exists, and that the sacred texts of religion are his will. The result is a loss of reasoned consideration of social issues, a loss of tolerance for difference and ability to compromise with those of differing ideas and beliefs.
The consequence in American society is bigotry toward gays, transgender people, immigrants, women and atheists. Other religions have their own immutable laws and biases. At the core, the problem is the notion that religion is an absolute truth. When religious leaders represent that they are the channel of the absolute truth of God, it opens the door to sexual and financial abuse of their followers.
Cults, Evangelical Leaders and Sexual Misconduct
“Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.”
-- Robert Heinlein, as Lazarus Long, in Time Enough For Love.
Sexual and financial misconduct is strangely prevalent among religious leaders. It seems more common among religious leaders than business leaders or others (although politicians are not far behind). Perhaps it is because of power; or perhaps it is because religious leaders know they are already lying. In any event, an entire blog could be written about misconduct by religious leaders. To research the topic it seems you could fall into a bottomless rabbit hole.
Closely associated with the problem of absolutism is the problem of cults. Cults often center on a single charismatic leader, who assumes the infallibility of God as God’s representative to the cult. Why is the cult leader seen as the representative of God? Because he said so. Cult leaders gain enormous power over their followers, power that is usually ultimately abused. If you find a cult led by a charismatic leader, you often find that the leader has enjoyed sexual relations with numerous members of his flock, while psychologically manipulating them to accept abuse without complaint. Jim Jones, David Koresh, Warren Jeffs, Shoko Ashara, Joshua Duggar, Tony Alamo and others exemplify the hazard of religious authority assumed by a charismatic leader.
Rulon Jeffs and his son Warren Jeffs were leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a cult-offshoot of the Mormon religion. At the time of the elder Jeffs’ death, he was reported to have between 60 and 65 wives, and a similar number of children. Among his wives were girls as young as 14. Warren Jeffs married most of his father’s surviving wives, and more of his own, for a total of 78 wives. Again, some were as young as 14. The younger Jeffs is now serving a term of life in prison for statutory rape of children.
Some of the wives of Warren Jeffs
Cult leaders David Koresh and Jim Jones similarly engaged in sexual coercion, requiring that wives of cult members and other women and girls perform sexual favors for the leader. Both Koresh and Jones ultimately led their followers into horrific self-inflicted massacres.
In 1978, Jones ordered the murder of an investigating Congressman and four others who wished to leave the cult. Jones then ordered a mass murder-suicide that killed 909 of his followers.
Christian leaders and clergy are no exception to the generality about sexual misconduct by religious cultists. In fact, sexual misconduct seems to be the norm rather than the exception, involving some of the most successful televangelists, including Jimmy Swaggert. Ted Haggard, Carl Lentz, Jim Bakker, Bill Gothard, Jerry Falwell Jr., Bob Coy, Doug Phillips, Earl Paulk, Coy Privette, Joe Barron and many others. Investigations have revealed credible accusations of sexual abuse by over 6000 American Catholic clergy, and hundreds of cases by Baptist clergy. Often the victims of the sexual abuse are children. The hypocrisy is stunning. Misconduct is often in of a form regarded by the church as morally worse than consensual affairs, including adultery, prostitution, homosexuality, pedophilia and group sex. Financial misconduct or excess is often part of the package. The psychological, financial and physical damage to religious believers is substantial, in any accounting.
Cult leaders such as Jeffs, Koresh and Jones are outliers in the
spectrum of religious leaders. But there are thousands of known
Catholic pedophile priests, and hundreds of known abusers in even a
single protestant sect.
Evangelical Leaders, Financial Excess and Misconduct
Houston mega-church pastor Joel Osteen has a net worth reported between $50 million and $180 million, lives in a 17,000 sq. ft. mansion, owns a $338,000 Italian sports car and a private jet. Other televangelists with excessive wealth include Kenneth Copeland ($300 M to $760 M, source: MSN), David Oyedepo ($150 M), Ayodele Oritsejjafor ($120 M), Pat Robertson ($100 M), Benny Hinn ($60 M), Uebert Angel, ($60 M), Chris Oyakhilome ($50 M) , Creflo Dollar ($39 M), EA Adeboye ($35 M to $130 M), Rick Warren ($28 M), Ray McCauley ($28 M), Tshifhiwa Irene ($35 M), T.D. Jakes ($20 M). Certainly, there are business leaders who have accumulated far greater wealth, so one might ask why is the enrichment of clergy a greater harm? It is because the product clergy are selling is a fraud. Prominent clergy convicted or disciplined because of financial fraud include Peter Poppoff, Richard Roberts, Mike Warnke, Robert Tilton, Kent Hovind, and Mike Guglielmucci.
There is no basis for the offer of eternal life or earthly blessings in exchange for donations to the church. Huge sums from donations are diverted to line the pockets of the clergy, rather than for good works in the world. There is also the hypocrisy of Christian faith leaders, considering the words of Christ: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24).
Conclusion
The history of religion is deeply unjust, from our earliest understanding of Neolithic cultures to the present. Ancient sacred texts reflect beliefs, practices and values which have no place in the modern world. Murder, slavery, misogyny, tribalism, xenophobia and classism were part of the ancient world, and feature prominently in sacred texts. The history of religion is saturated with violence and cruelty. Religion brings absolutism and dogma, choking independent human thought. And from absolutism, religious leaders assume power and commit sexual and financial crimes against their followers.
This post began with the question of whether religion is a net benefit or a net harm to humankind. I’ve focused only on negative issues, which are substantial. There is really no way to tally the cumulative harm from religion, and no way to tally the cumulative benefit from religion. The issues that I’ve raised in this post are mostly in the past, although problems of fraud, absolutism and bigotry remain today. In my next post, I’ll consider the primary issue going forward, in my opinion. That issue is the issue of credulity, and the harm from believing things that are not true.
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References on Scandals Involving Clergy
Richest Pastors in the World vs. an Average Pastor’s Salary
https://churchleaders.com/pastors/450460-richest-pastors-in-the-world.html
Highest-Paid Pastors in the World (MSN)
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/highest-paid-pastors-in-the-world/ss-AA12NTCj#image=25
Sexual and Financial Scandals
https://www.ranker.com/list/pastors-that-fell-from-grace/genevieve-carlton
https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/118212
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamo_Christian_Foundation
Lists of Religious Scandals in Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Misconduct_by_Christian_clergy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Scandals_in_Evangelicalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Scandals_in_Christian_organizations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Child_sexual_abuse_scandals_in_religions
