15 Signs Your Church Functions Like a Cult |
Uncritical defensiveness of religion without regard for human welfare can lead to religious fundamentalism.
Fundamentalist religious abuse can involve anti-intellectualism, authoritarianism, castes, and ritual shaming.
Cult abuse and fundamentalist abuse overlap in terms of separatism, censorship, and autocratic leadership.
Most people presume that religious institutions are safe spaces and that religious leaders rarely distort or weaponize doctrine for harm. This general sentiment persists, even among people who are familiar with religious corruption and the many wars, holocausts, hate groups, colonial empires, and caste systems that religious leaders have influenced throughout history.
Religious psychologists attribute this denial to the fact that many people turn to religion to find emotional catharsis, to escape grief or tragedy, or to find a sense of control or certainty about the unknown.
Critical thinking can be less important to people whose religiosity is emotionally driven. For these people, religion is often connected to their will to live and is the primary lens through which they make meaning of life. Consequently, a bias emerges that defies critical thinking: They misperceive any critique of religious harm within a particular context as an attack on religion altogether. They are unable to see how one can critique a thing precisely because they see immense value in it and therefore wish to do right by it.
Emotional bias to this degree lends itself to religious fundamentalism, or a movement to interpret religious scriptures or dogmas strictly and literally while also pursuing revival of a romanticized/mythical past and juxtaposing the alleged purity of one’s in-group against the alleged impurity of “worldly” out-groups.
Religious fundamentalists/zealots typically have an absolutist, defensive, and militant view of religion. That their entire life is religion means their defense of religion rarely has reasonable limits, like exceptions for sexual abuse, fraudulence, or bigotry. Instead, they’re defensive of religion even when what or whom they’re defending directly contradicts their religion’s most basic ethical tenets (e.g., the Ten Commandments). They need to believe religion is perfect to feel powerful.
Such fundamentalists/zealots are often bystanders or proponents of religious abuse. While anti-intellectualism is a primary vehicle of religious abuse, abusive dogma is also reinforced by authoritarianism, castes, public humiliation rituals, and an organizational culture of spiritual one-upmanship/posturing/virtue signaling.
Fundamentalists/zealots justify these harmful practices by claiming that they have the right to their own identity. Yet, constructive identity does not need to emerge at the expense of any other person or group.........