E4: How Religion and Politics Corrupt Each Other
The concept of religion is as old as humanity. It exists in some form in virtually every human society, and it typically holds a position of high esteem in those societies. But religion for all of its high aspiration is the work of mere mortal men, and as such, religion is prone to the weaknesses of these very mortal human administrators.
Albert Einstein addressed these issues of weakness in his New York Times Magazine, 1930 article 'Religion and Science'. In this article, he called out the most primal emotion in the original development of religious thought and experience as fear. What he said in paraphrase is that:
'it does not take much consideration to see that the predominant emotions presiding over the birth of religion has been above all else our fear of the great unknown that surrounds us. The human mind creates illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend. Thus one tries to secure the favor of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which, according to the tradition handed down from generation to generation, propitiate them or make them well disposed toward a mortal. In this sense [he was] speaking of a religion of fear.
This fear is an important element that stabilizes the formation of a special priestly caste which sets itself up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear, and erects a role of societal dominance on this basis. In many cases a leader or ruler or a privileged class whose position rests on other factors combines priestly functions with its secular authority in order to make the latter more secure; or the political rulers and the priestly caste make common cause in their own interests.'
Albert Einstein - 'Religion and Science' - 1930
In these few words, Einstein has captured the essence of the great problem that plagues all religions in all times. They all begin with the message of some noble moral intent, but the process of getting this message out inevitably results in the creation of an organization that needs followers to fund the effort and make the existence of the organization relevant. These organization's pursuit of followers can lead its leadership to a disturbing preoccupation with worldly things. A trap that seduces many of these religious leaders who control the religious message to become false prophets.
This disturbing preoccupation with worldly things can have a very divergent affect on the religion's messages and intent when changes are made to the message for the worldly sake of the organization. This control of the message affords those church leaders considerable power. When they control the scripture and its interpretation, they have a lot of opportunity to insert personal opinions and prejudices. Through the ages there have been church leaders with personal opinions who wanted to insert their thinking into church doctrine. In some cases, these insertions were done to promote a cause they thought had been overlooked. In other cases, they were more simply just trying to manipulate their followers thinking in a more selfish way.
This primal fear of the great unknown that surrounds us creates a special vulnerability in potential religious followers that can be exploited to extreme advantage. To allay this primal fear in their followers, religions profess to assume a higher ground to provide comforting explanations and a sense that a higher power is providing us guidance. They frequently proclaim there is a powerful being who is watching over us, and this loving being has a code of behavior that must be followed to warrant the favor of reward over the punishment for misdeeds.
Some succumb to the temptation and exploit this special vulnerability for personal gain. There are no shortage of those willing to exploit. These exploitation problems with organized religions can be found throughout history. Some recent examples include the Prosperity ministries and The Guru of Bling, but the decadence of the 16th-century Roman Catholic Church that led to the Protestant Reformation is a classic example. According to Einstein, these religious problems go back much further than this. He believed these problems can be traced back all the way back to their inception.
The fact that the western religious clergy control their scriptures has been known for a long time. Even Jesus acknowledged the problem in one of his sayings recorded in the Gospel of Thomas:
Jesus said, “The Pharisees and the Scribes have taken the keys to knowledge and have hidden them. They have not entered, nor have they allowed those who want to enter to do so. As for you, be as clever as snakes and as innocent as doves.”
-- Gospel of Thomas saying 39
In eastern religion, the Buddha denied many things around the ritualistic brahminism that dominated the Hindu world view of his times. His teachings are filled with truths from the Veda scriptures, but he denounced organized Hindu brahminist that lead how the Vedas were understood and practiced then. He took the radical position of taking only the Vedic inspired kernels of truth and dismissed the rigid structure of rituals, forms, and methods that largely favored the religion organization. He made enlightenment a personal struggle to overcome illusion and suffering.
Many people derive great solace from their religious beliefs, but much of this solace is from the fear of the dire consequences their religion has instilled in them about not believing their religious doctrine. Somewhere along the way, many religions have become very aggressive in their pursuit of followers sometimes to the extent of actually waging war against those of different faiths. Some religions actually regard apostasy as a capital crime in places where they have the political clout to enforce these executions. Ironically, all this coercion, hate and violence is being done in the name of their god(s) who they say is full of love and mercy.
The religious messages of love and compassion have become corrupted and mangled by centuries of manipulation by persons and institutions that are much more focused on power and wealth instead of spiritual fulfillment. After centuries of this corruption, any spiritual value these religious messages may have had originally are now pretty much diluted away with religion being plagued by a number of problems such as religious inspired hate and prejudice and faiths sharing the same scriptures openly hating and are in conflict with each other.
These religions all claim to be the worldly representation of the same god(s) who lovingly created life and gave it free will, but their leadership ranks are filled with those who are much more interested in their personal well-being. Many of them are quick to point out these weaknesses in the religions they compete against for followers, but they are unable to see the very same corruption in their own ranks. Some are involved in religion for the right reasons of doing right unto others, loving their neighbor, and loving (not fearing) their god. They may even be a majority, but this scourge of personal self-interest for power and wealth seems to overwhelmingly predominant perception.
All these religious zealots who want to forcefully apply their religion seem to have missed one very important point. All men are endowed by their creator with the free will to aspire to whatever spiritual pursuit they choose. No mortal man or institution has the right to abridge that god given free-will.
In many ways today, it appears that religion has created more suffering than it has alleviated. So where then do we find our salvation?
Thomas Jefferson was an advocate for what he called a "wall of separation between Church and State". Most commonly this ‘wall’ is considered from the perspective of protecting the state from the corrupting influence of the particular demands of a specific religion, but this wall also protects the religion from the reverse corrupting influence of government.
The alignment of Christianity with the Roman Empire is a good case in point. After that alignment, the emphasis of the religious message morphed from peace, love, and hope to power, wealth, and control. Dissenting views and ideas were brutally crushed out of existence. Inquisitions and wars were waged as holy endeavors. The church became wealthy and powerful as the message became corrupt and controlling to support the collection of followers and the wealth and power they could generate.
Whenever a government aligns with a religion (e.g. Christianity in medieval Europe or the Taliban in modern day Afghanistan), those societies typically experience a loss of freedom, repression, and discrimination as the prejudices of the aligning religion are expressed through the administrative vehicle of that government. Less commonly noticed are the changes to the religion. What once may have been about spiritual growth, peace, and love, becomes to be more about power, wealth, and manipulation. The religion becomes more about crushing out any opposition than saving the masses.
Unfortunately, those most likely to be involved in state politics are a small percentage of those who practice these religions who insist on an extreme, literal interpretation of their particular scriptures. They try to force these extreme ideologies on others using both emotional and physical means. In the worst case scenarios, they actually infiltrate and corrupt governments with their beliefs in their attempts to force everyone to believe what they believe. While these account for only a small percentage, even a small percentage of a number in the billions actually equals a lot of very dangerous people resulting in a very serious problems for all humanity.
A good clear example of this religion and politic corruption is clearly evident in the USA today. For decades, a group of conservative Christian political factions has been engaging in the national and state political arena to promote what they call socially conservative policies. They want to apply their rigid interpretation of Christianity to politics to influence the creation of law and public policy that is favorable to their religious prejudice and bias.
They are aggressively approaching this agenda in an all out attempt to gain complete control of the national and state governments across the country. Their campaign strategy are very nasty largely based on character assassination and mud-slinging.
Their legislative agendas have been very obviously been aimed at maintaining the hold on power with voter ID requirement and restricted polling opportunities, repressing groups they hold in contempt with bathroom bills, and stack the judiciary in their favor with very biased judicial appointments.
They like to think and widely proclaim they are the righteous alternative, but in recent years, the complete moral bankruptcy of this Christian Right movement has become very apparent.
The process of discovering the truth involves asking difficult questions and being open to all possible answers even those that are not necessarily what is expected. These hardcore beliefs are definitely not conducive to the kinds of thinking required for these difficult questions. As such, religion has little to offer in the search for real truth.
