Last time, I introduced this series that I’m calling “Religion Gone Wrong,” about the negative impacts religion can have on people’s lives, and what we can do about it. It’s interesting for me to frame the issues in this way because my approach here on the blog has been intentionally very positive, wanting to uphold and bring forward the best of our theological and spiritual traditions rather than complain about the bad.
And yet, this very intention means that its negative corollary is always there in the background. For example, one of my first posts here was a reflection on “religion that works,” based on a contrast between two versions of religion portrayed in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus:
It was what Aunty Ifeoma did to my cousins, I realized then, setting higher and higher jumps for them in the way she talked to them, in what she expected of them. She did it all the time believing they would scale the rod. And they did. It was different for Jaja and me. We did not scale the rod because we believed we could, we scaled it because we were terrified that we couldn’t.
While the protagonist’s father’s religion was all about power and control, keeping her in her place, the religion of her aunt opened up possibilities and potential for her children. Both paths were recognizably Christian, and specifically Roman Catholic. On the surface, they shared the same faith, but their approaches and results were completely different.
This reflects a deep truth: few things in human experience have as much possibility for goodness, truth, and beauty as religion; yet few things have as much possibility for evil, lies, and ugliness too. Being “religious” is therefore in and of itself a neutral value; it’s how we practice it that makes it ‘good’ or ‘bad’. And this will never be cut and dry, wholly on one side of the ledger or the other. Our experiences, because they are human and therefore inherently complex, will always be a mixture of the good and the bad, helpful and unhelpful. Moreover, nothing good in this world is without its shadow: and the brighter the light, the darker the shadow it casts. (For more on this idea, see my series from last year, The Christian Shadow.)
We can therefore conceive of experiences of religion as existing on a spectrum, with the wholly abusive and controlling on one extreme, and the healthy and empowering on the other. And again because nothing in this world is entirely good or entirely bad, all of our actual experiences will be somewhere in the middle. Even cult survivors often say they miss aspects of their life within the cult, such as the strong sense of community, purpose, and meaning (cf. Anderson’s comments on those who have left High-Controlling Religions (HCRs) on p. 148).* And even the most positive, affirming experiences can create shadow: For example, if we believe that we are made for goodness, truth, and beauty, that can leave us with no way of healthily engaging with those parts of our personalities or experiences that don’t reflect those positive values.
While all this may be obvious, I think this is helpful context for the discussions to come. There is an unhelpful tendency in discourse about religion that it either has to be seen as wholly positive or as purely destructive, and the reality is that neither extreme is realistic. Religion can build up and it can destroy. We need to acknowledge both sides if we’re going to come to come to any understanding of it as a phenomenon, and most especially our experiences of it.
* Laura Anderson, When Religion Hurts You. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2023.
