E4: How Religion and Politics Corrupt Each Other

 

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.

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Salvation Through Faith or Enlightenment

The central figure in all variations of Christianity is the great teacher Jesus Christ who purportedly traveled around teaching through sermons that promoted doing good deeds and loving each other. He never personally wrote any of these things down, but the things that he said were later recorded by others who had seen him. These second-hand accounts were the only written record of his teachings and even evidence of his existence.

The first organized religion to congeal around this example of Jesus after his death by crucifixion evolved out of a variety of forms of Gnosticism. Gnosticism at that time was a thread of spiritual thought running through various iterations in the Mediterranean region espousing a knowledge of the Divine via direct experience. The Gnostics believed that the material world was created by a supreme being, and that a portion of this supreme being was trapped within the human body which could only be liberated by the accumulation of gnosis (aka knowledge).

Gnosticism was a collection of ancient religious ideas and systems that emphasized personal experimentation and practice to acquire knowledge without any reliance on religious dogma. In gnosticism, gnosis is an esoteric mystical knowledge of transcendence that is acquired by way of internal, intuitive means and that salvation is the result of this knowledge of the divine. It was prominent around the Mediterranean basin around 200 CE existing in conjunction with early Christian movements and ideas emerging from the middle stage developments of the Greek philosophy of Plato.

Gnostic writings contain some sayings attributed to Jesus that exhibit similarities with modern Christian canonical sayings. Other of these sayings attributed to Jesus are strikingly different. For example, canonical sayings talk about the coming of an end-time while the Gnostic sayings describe a kingdom of heaven that is already here, not a future event. The Gnostic tradition was a theology of mysticism wherein the kingdom of heaven exists in the here and now. Some believe the Gnostic sayings were recorded nearer to the time of Jesus’s death and are thus closer to the source of the teachings of Jesus.

Modern day Christianity is a good example of the backsliding that occurred in the centuries after the death of Jesus away from his aggressive focus on knowledge acquisition. Instead of an openness to questions, modern Christianity chose to replace this personal knowledge acquisition through questions to a rigid, structured dogma created and maintained by church administrators.

During the course of early Christian development, a seismic transition in approach occurred when the early church blatantly attempted to exploit this emotional dependency around the subject of a higher spiritual deity. They used this emotional dependency that was ubiquitous across all of humanity to garner and control the power and financial support of their followers.

This stark transition is clearly apparent in the early history of Christianity's evolution to become a religion during which Jesus’ promotion of love and peace was replaced by a harsh campaign of fear, intimidation, and even acts of war. In this early transition of the Christian church, the written records from the time of Jesus were carefully screened to erase much of Jesus’ original message declaring it heresy that should never be considered, but they could not erase this truth forever.

Perhaps the most dramatic difference between the Gnostics and modern Christians is their perceived path to salvation. The Gnostics believed salvation could only be attained by diligently seeking knowledge while the modern Christians believe salvation is a reward for dutifully keeping the faith in spite of adversity. Modern Christian scriptures attribute the words ‘seek and ye shall find’ to Jesus. These words seem to more support the Gnostic belief that requires an active process of seeking rather than the passive process of simply believing the things we are told.

A very specific change in spiritual approach occurred during a second attempt to organize a religion based on Jesus when the Roman empire adopted a Christian religion of its own. Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to the Christianity he had created. He declared religious tolerance for Christianity in the Roman empire and called the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE which was the first of many efforts where the modern Christian beliefs were officially defined hundreds of years after the death of Jesus. Some contend that Constantine’s conversion to Christianity was inspired more by political expediency than spiritual revelation. This proclivity for political expediency still exists in modern Christianity.

The religious tenets selected at the First Council of Nicaea by the newly emerging church became the beliefs that the faithful would be forced to believe. In these newly emerging Christian beliefs, the individual focus on peace, love, and knowledge was shifted in a direction more conducive to the accumulation of power, control, and wealth by the church and its administrators. Groups, such as the Gnostics, responsible for the competing lines of thought were aggressively persecuted to near extinction.

The Cathars were a form of Gnostic belief in 1200 - 1400 CE France that were limited in size because they were not proselytizers. The Cathars were wiped out by French royalty and Catholic Church armies during the Albigensian Crusade. The ruthless brutality of this crusade was captured in the words spoken by a crusade commander when asked by his soldiers how to identify Catholics from Cathars in a town known to be home to both. He replied "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" ("Kill them all, the Lord will recognize His own").

What remained of the Cathars after this Catholic Church crusade were absorbed into some of the early Protestant sects who themselves went on to have a contentious relationship with the Catholic Church. Religious involvement in what should be political affairs of state has a very corrupting influence on that religion, and a religion’s proclivity to proselytize new followers and heavy reliance on dogma are symptoms of this corruption.

The objective of politicized religion is to acquire an effective marketing strategy for the acquisition and management of followers to the benefit of the religious organization. This politicized religion is a low overhead, high-profit margin business that enjoys the benefit of tax shelter. The result has been the creation of a church administration that in spite of the original intention of Jesus, has gone on to be a great oppressor who has been the root source of innumerable wars. It is the root source of the scourge of racism and misogyny as it promoted the oppression of the rights of marginal social groups.

The life blood of any religious institution is its aggregation of followers. These followers equate to the power, wealth, and most importantly relevancy of an organized religion. Religions in pursuit of these followers typically deploy a marketing strategy to reach the uncommitted followers, but since Western religion traditionally reserves study and interpretation of the scripture to their ordained clergy, attracting followers with a really strong spiritual seeking message isn’t very effective. The message needs to be that just right combination of easy to do and personally compelling that only makes sense when viewed from a marketing perspective.

Take the Christianity salvation belief for example. How did the teacher who said “And unto him that smites you on the one cheek offer also the other; and he that takes away your cloak forbid not to take your coat also.” become the terrible tyrant who will condemn you to a lake of fire for all eternity for the seemingly insignificant slight of not formally declaring him as your personal savior?

It really never says that outright in the Bible. It all begins with the seemingly benign quote “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes unto the Father, but by me.” This harsher salvation principle is developed by inference from this saying in combination with other things in the Bible outside the context of this one, but this salvation principle is what many if not all Christians believe. By what logic did it become the cornerstone of the Christian belief?

“No one reaches the Father but through me” has been embellished into ‘believe in me or suffer horribly for all eternity in the afterlife’. This embellished message has no real spiritual value, but it does have great marketing potential because it is very easy (i.e. all you do is believe and support the belief support institution) and what could be more compelling than the gut wrenching threat of burning for all eternity in the lake of fire. In short, it is very effective in getting followers and keeping them in the fold.

Curiously, this contrived salvation belief affords to church administrators the opportunity to assume the authority mantle of a deity who is conspicuously not directly available. In some extreme cases, there are documented examples where someone self appointed themselves to be this emissary and assumed this level of control of those who believed the deception. It has become a haven for con-men and charlatans who use it to take extreme advantage of their followers who come for the love and comfort of Jesus but get callously manipulated instead.

The most obvious weakness in this salvation belief is that it seems inconceivable that a loving god would do such a terrible, cruel thing. Condemning anyone to a terrible torture for all the remainder of eternity is certainly terrible, but it is unthinkable that the warning of these dire consequences is so cryptically stated in the Bible that it has to be interpreted from numerous disjointed verses. The least a loving god could do is spell it out in one place that does not require interpretation and move it up to the front of the Bible in bold print.

It is not uncommon to hear Christians justify their faith by saying ‘what if they are right?’ This statement is a clear indication of the effectiveness of this salvation message as a marketing strategy. The message is clearly more the contrivance of mortal men who want to get and control followers and not the intent of the Divine. This salvation message seems incredibly inconsistent with other Bible quotes that have been carefully overlooked in the collection of quotes used to support the justification for this salvation story such as:

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

The fairness of this salvation principle has frequently been called into question even by those who claim to follow Jesus. One such objection was the declaration of the Universal Reconciliation which is a doctrine that declares all these lost souls will eventually be reconciled by god’s divine love. In this controversial doctrine, those who created it generously allow some truth to the ‘believe in me or suffer horribly for all eternity in the afterlife’ notion. They have to believe because it is church dogma that cannot be questioned, but they soften its unbelievable savagery by expecting that compassion directed Divine intervention will eventually forgive all these lost souls and welcome them into heaven.

It is foolish to be that generous. The notion is ridiculous and was intentionally contrived by mortal men with the specific intent to garner and control followers through fear and intimidation to take advantage of the lazy spirits who passively accept a belief rather than think it through for themselves.

After the fear has sold this salvation concept, followers are locked into the concept by being told to passively believe without question. They are instructed to not even consider any other possibility because evil forces will use all manner of deception to dissuade them to ensure they go to the eternal lake of fire. These arguments appeal directly to the common human tendencies of fear and spiritual laziness.

Some consider accepting Jesus as their savior sufficient to earn this salvation, but others take this further and insist that salvation requires a belief in a complete, literal interpretation of all the Bible. Some actually take it further to include their own personal interpretations of the Bible. In some extreme cases (e.g. Jim Jones and David Koresh), these interpretations included sexual and financial manipulation by the leaders of the congregation.

This tendency to passive believe things that we are told has no place in our process of self-discovery. It is not productive and leads only to stagnation and entrapment by illusions. It is also contrary to another of Jesus’ sayings:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

This quote implies that believing alone is not the key to our salvation and that action is required to obtain that salvation. We have to seek what we want to find and that means asking questions and adjusting beliefs as needed to accommodate new levels of understanding.

Why did this Christ-based religion assembled hundreds of years after Jesus' death by the Roman Emperor Constantine feel so compelled to include this very misleading and harsh salvation doctrine? There is no clear indication where it originated because Jesus never specifically called it out. Instead, it was interpreted into the canon from various disjointed scripture verses by some of Constantine's contemporary biblical scholar hand-waving that he shielded from critical review by declaring it to be heresy to even question it.

Without any input from Jesus, it became the cornerstone for all later Christian interpretations of Jesus's intention. It was the reason these new religions justified their aggressive attempts to convert everyone to their own religious faith creating the proselytizing juggernaut that in the Roman military tradition set out to colonized the world. In that colonization many indigenous cultures were needlessly destroyed and vast numbers of persons were marginalized to being subservient and brutalized because they were deemed of lesser importance before this Christian colonization onslaught.

Additionally, the fear and intimidation promulgated by this very prescriptive salvation doctrine became an opportunity that a vast array of false prophets simply could not resist. Perhaps unlike Jesus’ emphasis on ‘doing unto others as you would have others do unto you’, this colonization was the Roman Emperor Constantine's unenlightened military-focused intention all along in inserting and protecting this salvation doctrine.

 

 Podcast Episode 3