Last Friday, I super-probably suggested you should super-probably feel comfortable submitting ideas for discussion/post/examination here, and my high school buddy, Stan, who has yet to accept Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and savior, took me up on it:
If the law prohibited exposing people younger than 21 to religion, would any one older than 21 choose religion of their own accord?
If you think about the role that religion (I prefer to split hairs and say “yahoos’ interpretation of religion”) is playing in our divided country — Christian nationalism, muscular Christianity, fundamentalism of all stripes — well, it’s a good question.
All human cultures have religion. They haven't all used it to justify the subjugation of other cultures. I think one major problem for Christianity (and Judaism, and Islam) is that it is based on a written record from manuscripts that have been copied, recopied, translated, retranslated, interpreted, reinterpreted, etc., etc., etc. and over the course of 2,000+ years has lost a lot of its original flavor. Add to that the fact that thanks to Constantine it went from being a subversive, anti-empire movement to becoming an instrument of the empire, and the results are what we have today--a Bible that can be used to justify pretty much any position anyone wants to take on matters of law, culture, politics, family life, war, guns, etc.
It's the same problem we have with the 2nd Amendment, and that's only 230 years old and was written in the same language we speak today.
Apr 17, 2023·edited Apr 17, 2023Liked by Susan Campbell
Thanks for being the one to point all this out, Sharon. This is personal for me. I was raised Catholic, switched to Christian Evangelicalism, then got hooked on Christian Fundamentalism (in the cult called The Way International), escaping that after 17 years. Now I'm agnostic, mainly due to some hard thinking and coming to terms with issues about the history of texts and different interpretations about what "God" is/does/does not do/says. I think that if folks base their religion on texts, a multitude of problems are unavoidable. That's one reason for all the different Christian denominations, right?
I've found some helpful voices on this topic, such as WIlliam James in his masterpiece, Varieties of Religious Experience, Joseph Campbell in his book, The Power of Myth, and Karen Armstrong in hers, The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism. Many more are out there, too.
Apr 17, 2023·edited Apr 17, 2023Liked by Susan Campbell
I agree. I was raised Greek Orthodox, attended Episcopalian churches for many years, and am now "unchurched." I've been reading a lot of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan lately.
Thank you Susan for entertaining my question, it is an honor.
When Susan and I were growing up in tiny Webb City, which is about an hour away from what I consider to be the true buckle of the Bible Belt, I remembered being presented the story of the Mormon religion. As I recall it was sort of an object lesson in how utterly ridiculous it would be to believe in any religion other than Christianity. I mean, apologies to Mormons, but the Mormon religion is absurd and that's how it appeared to me then. What I couldn't see, and what it took me decades for me to realize, is that Christianity is every bit as absurd as the Mormon religion, just more antique.
I mean consider the narrative and picture yourself selling this to a sentient human being who's never heard it before.
There's this guy and he's perfect and all powerful and he created everything. We know this because of a book that was written by somebody, we're not sure who. We don't know who created this guy but we're going to ignore that for the time being. Anyway he created the universe and the earth and then he created man in his own likeness to inhabit the earth. But even though he's perfect he just can't get man right. Man keeps disappointing him by eating forbidden apples and looking back on Sodom and Gomorrah, etc., etc. So he decides to drown them all or almost all of them and start over. But that doesn't work either so he decides to split off part of himself and make that portion of himself a human on earth. Now he doesn't just descend down to earth. He needs to impregnate a peasant woman so that he himself can actually be born in the normal way. When he grows up he walks all about a tiny section of the earth doing deeds that defy physics and biology. But ultimately he knows it's necessary for him to cause himself a very ugly and painful death because he has to do this for the sins of all the humans he has created and is still to create. I mean, he can't get his creation right so this is the obvious solution. Three days later he flies back up into the sky and is reunited with himself. However the plan is to split off again at some point in the future, suck up all the people living and dead who did Christianity well, and bring a plague of locusts on everybody who's doing it wrong. So anyway you need to accept Jesus as your personal lord and savior so that you will also go to a magical sky place after you die. The End.
I mean, I know I took creative license with a couple of things, but isn't that the story? And so the question is, if you hadn't had your brain wired up to all this as a child, is there a chance in hell you would believe it as an adult?
I love this question, Stan, and I appreciate you for sharing it in the first place. I'll be all over the map in this answer, so apologies in advance. And factor in that this comes from someone who was raised fundamentalist Christianity, with zero wiggle-room for personal interpretation. I am no longer a fundamentalist, but my brain was very much informed toward that and sometimes? I just can't hep myself. My own approach to religion isn't sitting in a pew these days. It's trying to figure out what good I can do in the world -- though I can't say that's my continual motivation because sometimes? You assholes really piss me off. Would I pay attention to the people who live in poverty had that not been taught to me early on, along with some really creepy notions about women? Of course I'd like to believe that I would come to that on my own, but I just don't know. I don't buy into original sin. I'm really washy on the literal interpretations of Genesis (and the rest of the Book, to be honest). Maybe because I've compartmentalized the teachings of Jesus --- or what we're told are the teachings -- I'm able to approach religion with less far and a lot more openness to people who aren't like me. For me, is religion a crutch? Not really, though I lean on it quite a lot. Does that make me a lower life form because I am not just being kind for the sake of making a better world, but with an eye on the cookie as a reward on the end? I do not know. But it pains me the way religion is used as a cudgel as I don't think that ever was supposed to be the purpose of it. I'm not answering any of your questions, though, am I?
I'm not even sure I have a question. Just blowing off steam.
BTW I actually did accept Jesus as my personal savior when I was a teenager. Read the entire bible and evangelized to all my high school classmates, no wonder I was so unpopular. When I decided that it was all lies, sometime in my 30s, I was angry. That lasted for years. But wonder ultimately replaced the anger. I found out that for me, disciplines like anthropology and evolutionary biology and neuroscience and statistics and so on provided thrilling answers to life's questions. Much more adult and satisfactory than those provided by religion. We really need a book about this--about why we're really here, why we behave as we do, why disasters and so-called miracles really occur, why we feel an additional presence inside our heads that some of us call god, etc.
I hope you write that book. And I forgot you'd believed for a while. I wonder why we didn't talk more about this in high school? (I didn't talk about religion all that much in high school; I just sort of swam it.)
I would be interested in better understanding the motivations for starting organized Christian churches, if you go way back to the beginning. Aa far as I could tell, things got added and interest in power over the people got mixed into spreading the good news and messages of love from Jesus. For centuries, certain religions have used their power to control their congregations. And politicians take on the role of church leaders in a way to garner support.
I always thought -- from childhood -- that Jesus came as a course corrective to the dominant faith at the time, not to start a new religion. But I am basing that on a gut feeling, so never mind.
I don't know enough about the evolution of the Christian churches to know what happened to the intention to course correct to get us where we are today in many churches. Remember that old childhood game telephone? That's what I think of when it comes to these things. Though I do think it was a big course correction - as in: just focus on spreading love. (i.e. Express your love toward everyone in how you treat them and to God, period.) It was a lot of the other stuff, especially in the Old Testament, that involved judgment and threats that organized churches used and still use to maintain control - as you know all too well from your fundamentalist experiences.
As for the formation of Christian communities/ekklesia*:
I read the Hebrew Bible as being very largely about how to do community. There are a lot of opinions about this throughout the books of the Hebrew Bible! At bottom they're all about living in close proximity without killing each other too much, which is what most community rules are about. Interestingly, though, in a number of places and notably the prophets, the ideas move out beyond being trustworthy and accountable to each other, to making an hospitable world.
I think that a lot of Jesus's reported teaching is on precisely that theme. And that as early groups of Jesus-followers tried to figure out how to continue Jesus-following, which so inexplicably survived Jesus's crucifixion, many of them tried out being gracious community. And that that founded much of their early success.
FWIW: A lot of people blame Constantine's adoption of Christianity (on some level) as an empire-wide religion, for the bureaucracy and power dynamics that plague the world now. I personally think it's more complicated and generically human than that, and precedes Constantine.
* Ekklesia is a word that means "called ones," and was earlier used to refer to the Athenian direct-democratic assembly.
Like most as a child, I worshiped the God of my mother’s understanding. Catholic through and the through. When I got old enough, 18 or some such, I walked away.
Then life happened, college, civil rights movement, Viet Nam, work, marriage, death, new life, real responsibility. The many happenstances life rains upon an unprotected head.
I couldn’t do it alone.
God does not tell us that life will always be easy, no. God tells us we won’t go through the difficult alone.
I enjoyed reading all of these comments. As someone raised UCC and the daughter of a deacon, I grew up with the B-I-B-L-E and the image of God as a man. But I also experienced many questions about the literal interpretation of the Bible and what does religion really mean. I came to believe that God is not a supreme being to solve all our problems or change things, but rather the strength and goodness inside all of us. I’ve called upon it many times in my life. And I do believe that when we die our spirits are reunited with those who passed before us, as a heaven.
I think we have to yeet religion out of government completely. Christianity has slowly been baked into US government to an extraordinary degree. I was horrified at many of the comments on a White House post celebrating Muslim staff during Ramadan. Its made me feel that we need to get "god" off our money, and out of all our oaths. We also need a truly secular calendar. Maybe one that rotates the different holidays around different religions? And either a three day weekend or a split weekend. I grew up nominally with the Catholic Church in Muslim countries, became an atheist, went back to the Catholic Church for a bit as an adult, and then left in disgust at the fundamentalism.
Start at the state level. No more Pledge of Allegiance. Look at calendars of schools around the world. Have a greater BOE made up of diverse people who can override local BOE in terms of holidays. Get rid of things like The White House Prayer Breakfast (This is federal) and create zoning laws that would enable more mosques and temples to be built. My town has a seal with five churches. That sends a message. "Only Christians Welcome here".
I remember this when it first ran. I think for me, I want to believe there is something bigger than what we see in front of us, and that there is something that happens after we die. I understand that may sound arrogant (I want more than my allotted time on earth because I'm special), and I promise I embrace science and believe in molecules and all of that. My belief in my original religion has been battered and bruised, but I never thought about leaving the faith, in general. I don't know if I'm responding to the idea of a cookie in the end ("Good job, Susan!") (Or: "Well done, good and faithful servant!") and I completely understand some people have no use for what can seem a complicated belief system, especially when it so often appears to be used as a weapon, or a judgment seat. I try to redirect my focus on the kind of leader/person Jesus may have been, and what we see in the public square doesn't, well, square with that at all.
Amen. I think the best of religion, regardless of which faith, inspires people to love and support one another, to inspire us to behave in ways that boost us all and care for those who are struggling, to live in harmony...in other words, create a heaven on earth. I think of God being the perfect example of what we should strive to be and being infinite love and knowledge. And when we're gone, I hope we become part of what God is and see all and love all. (And I hope we can find a way to communicate some of that to the living....or at least say "Hi" in some spirit-like way.)
I'm going to start out, anyway, by talking about religion rather than any given flavor of religion.
It would certainly be a gigantic change in US life to protect people from under 21 from all mention of religion. In terms of logistics I'm not sure how that would occur. It's not just at the public discourse level, hard though that would be. But would children be separated from their responsible adults who practice a religion? Would that include people who are atheist or indeed agnostic *by conviction*? (Defining the parameters of "religion" is a major issue in itself.)
So I guess children might well just be creche-raised to sanitize their environments. Would they emerge into a funfair panoply of religious advertising?
Back when pastoring, I did a small group book study of a book I can't currently remember the reference for. Written by someone raised in a conservative Protestant church, the author converted to Episcopalianism and was struck by both the tremendous theological and social-justice treasures of mainline churches, and by how little testimony people in such churches do. (That includes me: I grew up UCC.) And as our small group talked about telling people that we're doing <good thing> because we're [<denomination>] Christian, I examined not only what that would feel like (yucky), but whether in fact that would be a true statement from me. (I lie very little. Rationing.) It would not. My faith and faith practice build the person I am, rather than being a manual I refer to for operating instructions. (I mean, the many Christian traditions that inform who I am include a lot of manuals and instructions! Those are important for a lot of people! But I tend to regard them s applications or illustrations. And definitely as time/place-bound.
Anyway, I think that religion(s) definitely can be and is/are used in cruel and destructive ways. And supportive and life-giving ways, for individuals and through them their societies. But I suspect that the best way to keep things from playing out viciously is to demand some quietness and lack of priority around the platforms given to various faith traditions in the public square. Maybe to demand that it be more difficult to avoid knowing anything from outside the familial faith. Violating, in some cases, the tenets of a faith-- just as we disallow human sacrifice, regardless of its venerable history.
All human cultures have religion. They haven't all used it to justify the subjugation of other cultures. I think one major problem for Christianity (and Judaism, and Islam) is that it is based on a written record from manuscripts that have been copied, recopied, translated, retranslated, interpreted, reinterpreted, etc., etc., etc. and over the course of 2,000+ years has lost a lot of its original flavor. Add to that the fact that thanks to Constantine it went from being a subversive, anti-empire movement to becoming an instrument of the empire, and the results are what we have today--a Bible that can be used to justify pretty much any position anyone wants to take on matters of law, culture, politics, family life, war, guns, etc.
It's the same problem we have with the 2nd Amendment, and that's only 230 years old and was written in the same language we speak today.
All good points. We are living our lives (those of us who profess allegiance to a faith) to a generations-old dim mimeograph copy of a manuscript.
Thanks for being the one to point all this out, Sharon. This is personal for me. I was raised Catholic, switched to Christian Evangelicalism, then got hooked on Christian Fundamentalism (in the cult called The Way International), escaping that after 17 years. Now I'm agnostic, mainly due to some hard thinking and coming to terms with issues about the history of texts and different interpretations about what "God" is/does/does not do/says. I think that if folks base their religion on texts, a multitude of problems are unavoidable. That's one reason for all the different Christian denominations, right?
I've found some helpful voices on this topic, such as WIlliam James in his masterpiece, Varieties of Religious Experience, Joseph Campbell in his book, The Power of Myth, and Karen Armstrong in hers, The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism. Many more are out there, too.
Karen Armstrong rules. She just does.
And Bart Ehrman on the history of biblical texts and early Chistianity. He rocks!
I agree. I was raised Greek Orthodox, attended Episcopalian churches for many years, and am now "unchurched." I've been reading a lot of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan lately.
Religious zealotry is evil personified and it is happening across the globe!
Thank you Susan for entertaining my question, it is an honor.
When Susan and I were growing up in tiny Webb City, which is about an hour away from what I consider to be the true buckle of the Bible Belt, I remembered being presented the story of the Mormon religion. As I recall it was sort of an object lesson in how utterly ridiculous it would be to believe in any religion other than Christianity. I mean, apologies to Mormons, but the Mormon religion is absurd and that's how it appeared to me then. What I couldn't see, and what it took me decades for me to realize, is that Christianity is every bit as absurd as the Mormon religion, just more antique.
I mean consider the narrative and picture yourself selling this to a sentient human being who's never heard it before.
There's this guy and he's perfect and all powerful and he created everything. We know this because of a book that was written by somebody, we're not sure who. We don't know who created this guy but we're going to ignore that for the time being. Anyway he created the universe and the earth and then he created man in his own likeness to inhabit the earth. But even though he's perfect he just can't get man right. Man keeps disappointing him by eating forbidden apples and looking back on Sodom and Gomorrah, etc., etc. So he decides to drown them all or almost all of them and start over. But that doesn't work either so he decides to split off part of himself and make that portion of himself a human on earth. Now he doesn't just descend down to earth. He needs to impregnate a peasant woman so that he himself can actually be born in the normal way. When he grows up he walks all about a tiny section of the earth doing deeds that defy physics and biology. But ultimately he knows it's necessary for him to cause himself a very ugly and painful death because he has to do this for the sins of all the humans he has created and is still to create. I mean, he can't get his creation right so this is the obvious solution. Three days later he flies back up into the sky and is reunited with himself. However the plan is to split off again at some point in the future, suck up all the people living and dead who did Christianity well, and bring a plague of locusts on everybody who's doing it wrong. So anyway you need to accept Jesus as your personal lord and savior so that you will also go to a magical sky place after you die. The End.
I mean, I know I took creative license with a couple of things, but isn't that the story? And so the question is, if you hadn't had your brain wired up to all this as a child, is there a chance in hell you would believe it as an adult?
I love this question, Stan, and I appreciate you for sharing it in the first place. I'll be all over the map in this answer, so apologies in advance. And factor in that this comes from someone who was raised fundamentalist Christianity, with zero wiggle-room for personal interpretation. I am no longer a fundamentalist, but my brain was very much informed toward that and sometimes? I just can't hep myself. My own approach to religion isn't sitting in a pew these days. It's trying to figure out what good I can do in the world -- though I can't say that's my continual motivation because sometimes? You assholes really piss me off. Would I pay attention to the people who live in poverty had that not been taught to me early on, along with some really creepy notions about women? Of course I'd like to believe that I would come to that on my own, but I just don't know. I don't buy into original sin. I'm really washy on the literal interpretations of Genesis (and the rest of the Book, to be honest). Maybe because I've compartmentalized the teachings of Jesus --- or what we're told are the teachings -- I'm able to approach religion with less far and a lot more openness to people who aren't like me. For me, is religion a crutch? Not really, though I lean on it quite a lot. Does that make me a lower life form because I am not just being kind for the sake of making a better world, but with an eye on the cookie as a reward on the end? I do not know. But it pains me the way religion is used as a cudgel as I don't think that ever was supposed to be the purpose of it. I'm not answering any of your questions, though, am I?
I'm not even sure I have a question. Just blowing off steam.
BTW I actually did accept Jesus as my personal savior when I was a teenager. Read the entire bible and evangelized to all my high school classmates, no wonder I was so unpopular. When I decided that it was all lies, sometime in my 30s, I was angry. That lasted for years. But wonder ultimately replaced the anger. I found out that for me, disciplines like anthropology and evolutionary biology and neuroscience and statistics and so on provided thrilling answers to life's questions. Much more adult and satisfactory than those provided by religion. We really need a book about this--about why we're really here, why we behave as we do, why disasters and so-called miracles really occur, why we feel an additional presence inside our heads that some of us call god, etc.
I hope you write that book. And I forgot you'd believed for a while. I wonder why we didn't talk more about this in high school? (I didn't talk about religion all that much in high school; I just sort of swam it.)
I would be interested in better understanding the motivations for starting organized Christian churches, if you go way back to the beginning. Aa far as I could tell, things got added and interest in power over the people got mixed into spreading the good news and messages of love from Jesus. For centuries, certain religions have used their power to control their congregations. And politicians take on the role of church leaders in a way to garner support.
Regarding Stan's question: We could look toward the young adults who grew up without religion. The link below suggests 21% raised with no religion become Christian and 31% raised as Christian become religiously unaffiliated by age 30. It's an interesting modeling of the future of religion in America. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the-future-of-religion-in-america/#:~:text=Most%20significantly%2C%20each%20new%20generation,with%20no%20religion%20become%20Christian.
I always thought -- from childhood -- that Jesus came as a course corrective to the dominant faith at the time, not to start a new religion. But I am basing that on a gut feeling, so never mind.
I don't know enough about the evolution of the Christian churches to know what happened to the intention to course correct to get us where we are today in many churches. Remember that old childhood game telephone? That's what I think of when it comes to these things. Though I do think it was a big course correction - as in: just focus on spreading love. (i.e. Express your love toward everyone in how you treat them and to God, period.) It was a lot of the other stuff, especially in the Old Testament, that involved judgment and threats that organized churches used and still use to maintain control - as you know all too well from your fundamentalist experiences.
And then in some ways, Islam as another course correction?
I don't know enough to comment on it. I know Christianity and that's always been my impression.
As for the formation of Christian communities/ekklesia*:
I read the Hebrew Bible as being very largely about how to do community. There are a lot of opinions about this throughout the books of the Hebrew Bible! At bottom they're all about living in close proximity without killing each other too much, which is what most community rules are about. Interestingly, though, in a number of places and notably the prophets, the ideas move out beyond being trustworthy and accountable to each other, to making an hospitable world.
I think that a lot of Jesus's reported teaching is on precisely that theme. And that as early groups of Jesus-followers tried to figure out how to continue Jesus-following, which so inexplicably survived Jesus's crucifixion, many of them tried out being gracious community. And that that founded much of their early success.
FWIW: A lot of people blame Constantine's adoption of Christianity (on some level) as an empire-wide religion, for the bureaucracy and power dynamics that plague the world now. I personally think it's more complicated and generically human than that, and precedes Constantine.
* Ekklesia is a word that means "called ones," and was earlier used to refer to the Athenian direct-democratic assembly.
I really need to do more study on Constantine.
Like most as a child, I worshiped the God of my mother’s understanding. Catholic through and the through. When I got old enough, 18 or some such, I walked away.
Then life happened, college, civil rights movement, Viet Nam, work, marriage, death, new life, real responsibility. The many happenstances life rains upon an unprotected head.
I couldn’t do it alone.
God does not tell us that life will always be easy, no. God tells us we won’t go through the difficult alone.
I have found this to be true.
I enjoyed reading all of these comments. As someone raised UCC and the daughter of a deacon, I grew up with the B-I-B-L-E and the image of God as a man. But I also experienced many questions about the literal interpretation of the Bible and what does religion really mean. I came to believe that God is not a supreme being to solve all our problems or change things, but rather the strength and goodness inside all of us. I’ve called upon it many times in my life. And I do believe that when we die our spirits are reunited with those who passed before us, as a heaven.
Wouldn't that be wonderful? Maybe religion provides some of us with the peace of knowing we'll see our loved ones again -- parents, pets, all of them.
Definitely there’re goofballs that would want to believe
I know that for a fact
They probably would have started believing before they were teenagers
People want to believe
Some of them are goofballs
I think we have to yeet religion out of government completely. Christianity has slowly been baked into US government to an extraordinary degree. I was horrified at many of the comments on a White House post celebrating Muslim staff during Ramadan. Its made me feel that we need to get "god" off our money, and out of all our oaths. We also need a truly secular calendar. Maybe one that rotates the different holidays around different religions? And either a three day weekend or a split weekend. I grew up nominally with the Catholic Church in Muslim countries, became an atheist, went back to the Catholic Church for a bit as an adult, and then left in disgust at the fundamentalism.
I agree, but wouldn't even know where to begin to do that.
Start at the state level. No more Pledge of Allegiance. Look at calendars of schools around the world. Have a greater BOE made up of diverse people who can override local BOE in terms of holidays. Get rid of things like The White House Prayer Breakfast (This is federal) and create zoning laws that would enable more mosques and temples to be built. My town has a seal with five churches. That sends a message. "Only Christians Welcome here".
Religion is like guns, unsafe in the wrong hands. I’ve never had use for either.
I’ve probably linked to this before but Penn Jillette put it better than I ever could. He wrote it for NPR’s “This I Believe”.
https://www.npr.org/2005/11/21/5015557/there-is-no-god
I remember this when it first ran. I think for me, I want to believe there is something bigger than what we see in front of us, and that there is something that happens after we die. I understand that may sound arrogant (I want more than my allotted time on earth because I'm special), and I promise I embrace science and believe in molecules and all of that. My belief in my original religion has been battered and bruised, but I never thought about leaving the faith, in general. I don't know if I'm responding to the idea of a cookie in the end ("Good job, Susan!") (Or: "Well done, good and faithful servant!") and I completely understand some people have no use for what can seem a complicated belief system, especially when it so often appears to be used as a weapon, or a judgment seat. I try to redirect my focus on the kind of leader/person Jesus may have been, and what we see in the public square doesn't, well, square with that at all.
Amen. I think the best of religion, regardless of which faith, inspires people to love and support one another, to inspire us to behave in ways that boost us all and care for those who are struggling, to live in harmony...in other words, create a heaven on earth. I think of God being the perfect example of what we should strive to be and being infinite love and knowledge. And when we're gone, I hope we become part of what God is and see all and love all. (And I hope we can find a way to communicate some of that to the living....or at least say "Hi" in some spirit-like way.)
I'm going to start out, anyway, by talking about religion rather than any given flavor of religion.
It would certainly be a gigantic change in US life to protect people from under 21 from all mention of religion. In terms of logistics I'm not sure how that would occur. It's not just at the public discourse level, hard though that would be. But would children be separated from their responsible adults who practice a religion? Would that include people who are atheist or indeed agnostic *by conviction*? (Defining the parameters of "religion" is a major issue in itself.)
So I guess children might well just be creche-raised to sanitize their environments. Would they emerge into a funfair panoply of religious advertising?
Back when pastoring, I did a small group book study of a book I can't currently remember the reference for. Written by someone raised in a conservative Protestant church, the author converted to Episcopalianism and was struck by both the tremendous theological and social-justice treasures of mainline churches, and by how little testimony people in such churches do. (That includes me: I grew up UCC.) And as our small group talked about telling people that we're doing <good thing> because we're [<denomination>] Christian, I examined not only what that would feel like (yucky), but whether in fact that would be a true statement from me. (I lie very little. Rationing.) It would not. My faith and faith practice build the person I am, rather than being a manual I refer to for operating instructions. (I mean, the many Christian traditions that inform who I am include a lot of manuals and instructions! Those are important for a lot of people! But I tend to regard them s applications or illustrations. And definitely as time/place-bound.
Anyway, I think that religion(s) definitely can be and is/are used in cruel and destructive ways. And supportive and life-giving ways, for individuals and through them their societies. But I suspect that the best way to keep things from playing out viciously is to demand some quietness and lack of priority around the platforms given to various faith traditions in the public square. Maybe to demand that it be more difficult to avoid knowing anything from outside the familial faith. Violating, in some cases, the tenets of a faith-- just as we disallow human sacrifice, regardless of its venerable history.
I think the need for interpreters has passed. I agree with Rich on the judgmental and zealots