I’ve never been big on organised religions. Famously, one of the leaders of the Jewish congregation I grew up in suggested that I wouldn’t be permitted to undertake my Bar Mitzvah, the Jewish coming of age, because I wasn’t a good enough Jew. While he was indeed correct that I wasn’t a “good Jew” in the traditional sense of the word, it always seemed strange to me that one individual could play a God role and determine another’s meeting, or not, of a randomly instituted mark.
I was thinking about this within the context of more general thoughts around organised religions the other day. A friend had posted something on Facebook, as one does, detailing what he saw as the perils of one particular religion. In this case, he was detailing why he believed Islam is evil. I’m always nervous when anyone articulates their view about the evilness of an individual or group. Human beings are nuanced and flawed, and we all have positive and negative attributes. Conflating one particular attribute to be the sole determinant of an individual’s worth seems unsound to me.
But more specifically, when it comes to his assessment of what he perceives as negative aspects of this one particular religion, I was also a bit confused. If we look back at the history of the world, we see numerous examples of organised religion being used by others to subjugate individuals, build their own personal wealth or power or generally achieve aims diametrically opposed to what that particular religion stands for. Whether we’re talking sexual or physical abuse at the hands of dodgy Catholic priests, burning of alleged witches in the dark ages, the Crusades and the bloodshed they wrought or any of the other examples of religion being misused, the pattern is sadly familiar. Human institutions, when combined with authority and a sense of divine mandate, have an uncanny ability to drift far away from their original intent.
And that, I suspect, is the real issue. It isn’t the belief systems themselves that worry me as much as the human structures we build around them. Most religions, when you strip them back to their foundational texts or philosophies, contain fairly reasonable ideas. Be kind to others. Care for the poor. Don’t murder your neighbour. Treat people as you would like to be treated. None of that sounds particularly controversial. In fact, most of us would probably agree that those are perfectly sensible ways to live in a functional society.
The trouble begins when those simple moral frameworks become institutions. Institutions inevitably require leadership. Leadership requires hierarchy. Hierarchy tends to create power. And power, as we have learned time and again throughout human history, has a nasty habit of corrupting people who might otherwise have been perfectly decent citizens. Once religion becomes organised, it also becomes tribal. Suddenly, it isn’t just about personal belief or moral guidance. It becomes about identity. About who belongs and who does not. About who is right and who is dangerously wrong. At that point, it becomes a lot easier to justify behaviour that would otherwise seem indefensible.
History is littered with examples of this dynamic. Entire wars have been fought with religious justification sitting proudly on the banner, even when the underlying motivations were more about territory, politics or economic gain. Leaders have rallied followers by invoking divine authority, conveniently positioning themselves as interpreters of what God supposedly wants. That is a powerful trick if you can pull it off. If you can persuade people that your instructions are not merely your own but actually come from a higher power, you gain a level of influence that most political leaders could only dream of.
None of this is unique to one religion. That was the part of my friend’s Facebook post that made me uneasy. Singling out one faith tradition as uniquely evil ignores the rather inconvenient fact that nearly every major religion has, at various points in history, been used as a tool of control, oppression or violence. Humans are remarkably consistent in that regard.
Of course, this doesn’t mean religion is inherently bad. For many people, faith provides comfort, community and a framework for understanding the world. Religious communities often do enormous amounts of good through charity, social support and moral leadership. It would be both unfair and inaccurate to ignore those contributions. But it does mean we should probably be cautious about the structures we build around belief.
When belief becomes institutionalised, it can become rigid. When it becomes rigid, it often becomes defensive. And when it becomes defensive, it can start to see critics, outsiders or even mildly non-compliant insiders as threats rather than simply fellow humans with different perspectives.
Which brings me, somewhat inevitably, back to that slightly awkward moment from my childhood. Being told I might not be allowed to have a Bar Mitzvah because I wasn’t sufficiently Jewish was probably meant as a corrective measure. A nudge toward greater religious engagement, perhaps. But to my young mind, it felt less like spiritual guidance and more like bureaucratic gatekeeping. Even then, I remember thinking it was odd that someone else could decide whether I was adequately connected to something as personal as faith.
In the end, the whole thing worked out, and I did the Bar Mitzvah, although I suspect my enthusiasm for organised religion never fully recovered from the experience. If anything, it planted the small seed of scepticism that has quietly grown over the years.
These days, I find myself less interested in the labels people carry and more interested in how they behave. Whether someone calls themselves Jewish, Muslim, Christian, atheist or something entirely different seems less important than whether they treat others with decency. Ironically, that simple standard feels remarkably consistent with the core teachings of most religions.
Which makes it all the more curious that the organisations built to promote those teachings sometimes seem to struggle with them the most.
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