Is Religion Inherently Authoritarian?

[stromboli]

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Human history is a story of gradual moral enlightenment. Over the ages, we've become less violent, less xenophobic, more tolerant, more committed to the ideals of democracy and equality under the law. Of course, moral progress is painfully slow, with many holdouts and local reversals, and we have a very long way left to go. But it's hard to deny that the world we live in today is less prejudiced and more peaceful than the world 500 years ago, or even just 100.
Religion is a noteworthy exception to this trend of progress. Secular moral reasoning, founded on considerations of fairness and human good, allows for continual self-questioning and improvement as less-privileged groups speak out to demand justice and call our attention to evils that we'd been overlooking. In sharp contrast to this, the immutable doctrines of religion are supposed to be elevated above skepticism. Even if we know more or see farther than the clerics who once came up with them, many religious authorities tell us we should submit our wills and believe without questioning.

The result is that, in most cases, moral progress has left the churches behind. Like the tide going out and leaving once-submerged rocks high and dry on the shore, the archaic doctrines of conservative religion are increasingly isolated and exposed as the immoral and vicious absurdities they are. This has led to more conflict and dissension within the ranks, as believers who grew up in the modern era see the contradictions between what they're taught and know to be right, and inevitably come into conflict with religious authorities who are determined to enforce the old rules at any cost.

A case in point is the Mormon church's excommunication of Kate Kelly, a lawyer and human-rights activist who founded a movement called Ordain Women. Kelly's crime was calling for the all-male priesthood of the Mormon church to be opened to people of all genders, and doing so loudly and publicly enough to embarrass the church leaders. (Although the LDS church calls it a "priesthood," it's not a clerical or ministerial position; it's a rite of initiation, like a Jewish bar mitzvah or a Catholic confirmation.)

Kelly wasn't a firebrand atheist. She considers herself a faithful Mormon; she was married in the Salt Lake City Temple and went on an overseas mission trip as Mormonism requires. Yet she refused several orders to take her website down and stop speaking out, and just before her excommunication, she was defiant:

"I am not an apostate, unless every single person who has questions to ask out loud is an apostate," Ms. Kelly said in a telephone interview on Sunday , just before her disciplinary council met.
While she may have meant this comment as a reductio ad absurdum, I think it hits closer to the truth than she realizes. Almost every religion, throughout the ages, has looked unfavorably on people who have inconvenient questions and who insist on asking them out loud. What Kelly has yet to grasp is that religion is a fundamentally conservative force (unlike, say, science, where those who overturn conventional wisdom are rewarded). To claim that the tenets of some existing religion are wrong is to implicitly claim that you understand the will of God better than the authorities of that religion. Naturally, the people who've gained status and power within the existing strictures of the church will always look with extreme disfavor on this.
It's for this reason that religion is not only fundamentally conservative, but anti-democratic. Aside from a few rare exceptions, religion claims that God's will is delivered through special revelation: it was given to certain people, at certain times and places, and not others. If that were true—if there were people in possession of special, important truths that no one else could ever discover—then it  would be the case that those people would be uniquely qualified to tell the rest of us how to live.

But that expectation bumps up against the modern world, where divine-right monarchy is a discredited theory and democracy is a nearly universal idea (so much so that even rulers of autocratic states often feel the need to hold sham elections). The clash between these principles is most visible in the religious people who believe their leaders have a specially privileged understanding of God, but who also apparently believe the doctrines of their church should be put to a vote. The lay Mormons petitioning on Kate Kelly's behalf are an excellent example:

More than a thousand Mormons sent letters of support for Ms. Kelly to the bishop and two of his counselors considering her case in Oakton, Va. Hundreds turned out for a vigil in Salt Lake City while the hearing was underway, and smaller groups of supporters gathered at 50 sites in 17 countries, according to Ordain Women.
Mormonism isn't the only authoritarian religion whose members incorrectly believe they're participating in a democracy rather than an oligarchy. Roman Catholicism has the same affliction: for example, when Pope Francis was being selected, the author Anne Rice and others asked Catholics to  tell the Vatican what they wanted to see in a new pope, as if such feedback would be welcomed or even acknowledged.
The sharp divide between lay Catholics and hierarchy is perhaps best illustrated by the issue of women as priests. As recently as 2013, 70% of Catholics believe women should be allowed to be ordained even though Pope John Paul II announced that the exclusion of women from the Catholic priesthood was an infallible article of dogma and could never be changed. Kindly, progressive Pope Francis has said the same, stating that the "church has spoken and says no... that  door is closed" with regard to women's ordination.

It happens in Judaism as well, even though that religion has no single central authority. In Israel, Jewish women fought for years for the right to pray at the Western Wall, braving routine threats, abuse and harassment by ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews who believe the holy site should only be open to men. Finally, the reformers won a ruling in Israel's courts, opening up a designated prayer section at the wall for women. The ultra-Orthodox responded by ordering their own wives and daughters to show up en masse and pack the women's section, so that the women who actually want to pray there and who fought for the right to do so couldn't get in.

 
Granted, there are some cases where churches have joined the modern world without being forced to. For example, the Presbyterian church now allows its ministers to perform same-sex weddings, joining some other mainline Protestant denominations that have already taken this step. But this is the exception that proves the rule, since most of the tolerant and progressive mainline churches are in the midst of a demographic plummet. (The more conservative and evangelical denominations are also shrinking, just not quite as quickly.)
 
And on the rare occasions that churches recognize their past errors, they steadfastly refuse to draw any general lessons from the fact. Earlier this year, the Mormon church formally repudiated the racism of its past rules which barred black men from the priesthood until 1978. This would be a laudable step, except that the church is determined to learn absolutely nothing from it. In its ongoing fight against women in the priesthood, not to mention its fervent and continued opposition to same-sex marriage, it is falling into the same mistake all over again, refusing to recognize that its leadership is fallible, and that any rule treating human beings unequally is morally wrong. This will no doubt be viewed as another stain on the Mormon church's record, just as its history of racism now is.
 
Ethically speaking, there's no doubt that reformers like Kate Kelly and the Women of the Wall have their hearts in the right place, but it's legitimate to question their strategy. As the ex-nun Mary Johnson has said, at some point you have to ask yourself where your energies are best spent.
 
Is it worth the effort trying to change religion from within, beating your head against the metaphorical brick wall of a church that's run by an oligarchy of old conservative men who choose their own successors and who are determined never to change anything? Or does it make more sense to leave that frozen and fossilized cathedral, to renounce religion and step out into the wild garden of the wider world, where anyone can speak their mind and no one can cite the will of God as a trump card?

OK. Shit we already knew. The kate Kelly thing to me is kind of silly, because the women holding the priesthood thing is very specifically taught against and has been since day one.The race issue was simply a case of the church surviving- without the expansion into countries of mixed or diverse cultures (Brazil) and also the church's policies ran counter to the popular belief of the US as a nation, one of integration and diversity. They now trumpet black and other race members, but the fact is that the numbers haven't been as siginifcant as they claim. And the church as a whole is neither as diverse nor open as they claim.

But in fact more and more of what religion teaches makes less sense than ever, and the ultra conservative backlash that has happened the last decade or so merely highlights how much disparity there is between church doctine and morality and how the real world functions. The outrage of harsh treatment of gays worldwide harkens back to the racism of the 50's and 60's, and the comparisons are inevitable. As hate and bigotry are exposed, the churches will pay for it in membership and funding.

[Solitary]

Is Religion Inherently Authoritarian?

YES! Solitary

[Hydra009]

I sort of agree.  The only examples in the article are about Christianity, Mormonism, and Judaism, which isn't terribly representative of the world's religions.  I'm also pretty sure Wiccans and Buddhists and Hindus might object to the idea that their religion is inherently authoritarian.

That said, there is a lot of truth to this article.  Many religions are authoritarian in the sense of "strict obedience to authority" - there are tenets of the faith that one must believe and there is a priestly class that one must obey.  Just about any organized religion operates that way.  Additionally, organized religion by its very structure is an impediment to social change.  The religion's founder got everything right and believers aspire to live their lives (and make others live their lives) according to whatever the founder set forth.  Certainly, this is true of Christianity and Islam.  Of course, believers do assimilate new social norms (eventually), but these new ideas do not rest easy with the old ones, as exemplified by the fundamentalist–modernist controversy in Christianity and similar conflicts within other religions.

[stromboli]

I sort of agree.  The only examples in the article are about Christianity, Mormonism, and Judaism, which isn't terribly representative of the world's religions.  I'm also pretty sure Wiccans and Buddhists and Hindus might object to the idea that their religion is inherently authoritarian.

That said, there is a lot of truth to this article.  Many religions are authoritarian in the sense of "strict obedience to authority" - there are tenets of the faith that one must believe and there is a priestly class that one must obey.  Just about any organized religion operates that way.  Additionally, organized religion by its very structure is an impediment to social change.  The religion's founder got everything right and believers aspire to live their lives (and make others live their lives) according to whatever the founder set forth.  Certainly, this is true Christianity and Islam.  Of course, believers do assimilate new social norms (eventually), but these new ideas do not rest easy with the old ones, as exemplified by the fundamentalist–modernist controversy in Christianity and similar conflicts within other religions.

I don't agree with the selection either, and the Kate Kelly example is one even exmormons find a little hinky, because her demand to be a priesthood bearer-and subsequent women since- is really in the face of church practice and history. I also don't know if authoritarian is the right word. Something like rigidly fixated or carved in stone might be more apt.

But like you said, much of it is on point. The comment I would add is that, growing up Mormon and watching what has happened since I left, is how much the church has morphed over decades. This last year, to cement their (now) non racist stance, they basically threw a raft of former prophets and apostles under the bus, by saying they were misguided or flat wrong. One thing the Morg is good at is suddenly obviating canon of scripture; it ain't the first time. They are slightly more condescending about homosexuality now, but I'm not looking for any sea changes. The women will get the priesthood when enough wives are withholding sex from their leadership husbands.

The bottom line is survival, and they will do whatever it takes to do so. The latest thing was to change "sacrament meeting" to "worship service" to make it sound more mainstream christian.

[Solitary]

Any religion that has a leader who's authority is not questioned and practiced is authoritarian. Originally Buddhism was not, because Buddha never said you had to follow his teaching, that they were only suggestion on how to avoid pain and suffering. For some reason many people just have to have a god figure and silly magical rituals. Buddha is even considered a god in the Hindu religion, which is ridiculous, because he even said he was not, and that his teachings were not divinely inspired.  Solitary

[Munch]

Like you say, so many people want to be lead, being directionless in life, they need someone to govern their every principle in life, from work to faith to health.

That is how 'religions' gain power, one part the con-man forming the faiths, the second part the follower who needs it and wants to be lead, like those idiots in churches on sunday who stand up and PRAISE JEBUS HALLELUJAH all while putting money in a box because god needs it.

[Youssuf Ramadan]

Monotheism tends to be authoritarian.  Polytheism less so generally..... also, it would depend on the definition of 'religion'...

[Solitary]

I had an argument with a girl that was a born again Christian---this was after she got stung because of her wild wild ways. She said if there isn't a God, then why is it been believed for thousands of years by every culture? I told her because we are all helpless in the face of nature, and need a super hero to comfort them, and some assholes like to take advantage of it and control people because they are control freaks. It didn't help, and she quit her wild ways and went to church. I think people who no longer have their parents around, are immature and can't take the responsibility for their own decisions and actions and so let authority guide them through life. Solitary

[SGOS]

if there isn't a God, then why is it been believed for thousands of years by every culture?

Because regardless of how impressed with ourselves we may be, the fact is that mankind's intelligence in general is not very great.  And the bulk of the population isn't getting any better.

[Munch]

Your friend isn't this woman is she Solitary?

[Ace101]

I believe that religion (at least as far as Abrahamic religions such as Christianity and Islam are concerned) are definitely authoritarian.

Notice how the ultimate form of "immorality" is simply defying the "dear leader" (Yahweh, Allah, etc)? On the flip side slaughtering entire cities and taking the virgin girls as spoils of war is hunkie dorie isn't a big deal so long as the dear leader commands it?

So tell me again how the Bible (or the Koran) is any more "moral" than Atilla the Hun, or Ghengis Khan, or any other tribal warlord's "morals"?

[Mister Agenda]

Unitarian Universalism. Society of Friends. United Church of Christ.

I'd have to say it's not inherent, or there would be no exceptions.

[GrinningYMIR]

Your friend isn't this woman is she Solitary?

[josephpalazzo]

Religion is a human construct, and inevitably, the ruling class will use it to control the population.

[stromboli]

Religion is a human construct, and inevitably, the ruling class will use it to control the population.

This is true.