The Corrupting Influence of Organized Religion

I consider myself and the boyfriend to be fairly spiritual even if not in the "churchy" way of organized religion that puts man made rules and regulations and satisfying the egos and hunger for power and wealth of church leaders (and evangelical professions Christians) over what should be the main message of the religions they profess. One need only look at the Roman Catholic Church, the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention or organizations like Focus on the Family to see how institutionalizing religion seems to always corrupts and turns what might otherwise be a force for good into something more akin to a metastasizing cancer. One spiritual writer that the boyfriend likes is Sylvia Browne and in one of her books, If you Could See What I See, she has a letter that he brought to my attention from one of her followers that, in my mind, does a wonderful summation of the evil that comes from organized religion. Here are some highlights:

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Religion is both the savior and bane of mankind. How many millions have been comforted by organized religion over the ages, and how many have been killed, tortured, raped and plundered over these same ages?

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We must start with organized religion in the world today, for it's both part of the problem and the key to the salvation of the world. The major religions of the world have got to band together and not only preach but practice religious tolerance.

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Islam, the fastest growing religion on the world, has got to go back to its roots of religious tolerance and oust the extremists who practice terrorism in the name of a holy Jihad (holy war) on the "infidels" of other religions or countries. Most of the message from Mohammad was Christlike, teaching love and tolerance of others . . his teachings have been warped by extremists and conservative clerics who lust for power and greed at any cost of human life.

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Christianity also has some major problems that it must face. The Catholic Church has many internal problems that hurt others, . . . It has lost respect for its many internal scandals and failure to acknowledge its mistakes both in the past and in the present. . . It must make wholesale changes or it will go down, as so many inflexible dynasties have, and not have the powerful voice it once had.
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The Protestant movement is also becoming more inflexible and conservative with its right wing politics creating myriad problems in the form of bigotry, intolerance, and its propensity to try to gain power in the political arena. . . . Christianity is one of the least tolerant toward other religions, which makes the task of bonding with other worldwide religions, in order to accomplish an overall good for the world, seem near to impossible.

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Christianity today has become warped in many areas, namely that of preaching and practicing the worship of an all-loving and merciful God. . . . Some of these so-called Christian churches use the Bible so much that they ought to be named "Bible worshipers" instead of "worshipers of Christ." If Christ came down to the world today, I doubt he'd proclaim himself a Christian. Christianity needs to practice more religious tolerance, get out of the political arena, and really put forth the concept of an all-loving and merciful God - rather than a wrathful, vengeful God who has all of the imperfect emotions of mankind.

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The Christian motto seems to be: If you're threatened in your faith, for God's sake don't tolerate the right of others to believe otherwise. Instead, just destroy them, whether it be from the pulpit, in the political arena, with propaganda, or the sword.

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It's such a tragedy that the major religions of the world have messed up the simple act of worshiping God. God who created us all in our many different colors and ethnic backgrounds, and he even sent messengers to help us find our way to His all-loving and merciful self. We turn around and disregard or warp all that and make war and commit atrocities on each other.

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Unfortunately, I do not see any of the current leadership of the world's major religions putting the good of the world first. Rather, their own agendas for power, control, wealth, and just plain meanness are all they truly care about regardless of whatever platitudes they may state. Meanwhile, the potentially positive teachings of religion fall to the wayside as hate, intolerance and unrestrained hubris fuels unspeakable actions towards other fellow humans. All of this is one of the reasons I find myself remaining spiritual but less and less tied to organized religion. More often then not organized religion is a bane to world peace. Organized religion for the most part is also no friend to gay rights and equality. Indeed, it's usually the enemy.