Six Characteristics of Bad Religion

And how to counteract them

Photo by Arifur Rahman on Unsplash

In my last post, I shared some thoughts on the negative consequences of bad religion, noting especially the tragic fallout from toxic Christianity. As I’ve been subsequently reflecting on this topic, I’ve realized it might be helpful to spell out what it is, exactly, that makes for bad religion (I promise: not every piece I write for this newsletter will focus on the negative side of religion!).

Many of us know it when we see it or encounter it. We sense it viscerally and emotionally. But we may not know exactly how to articulate it. Others of us have perhaps been so enmeshed with toxic forms of religion that we aren’t even aware that we’re in its clutches, and perhaps these reflections can get the wheels turning.

Either way, I offer these observations for your consideration, though I note some important caveats: I am not a psychologist or sociologist. What I share below is not based on scientific or empirical study. It is the reflections—the opinion, even—of someone who has pastored for 15 years, has done a bit of armchair psychology and trauma research, and has gleaned from the Bible important principles about “pure and undefiled religion,” as the apostle James put it (see James 1:27).

My ultimate hope is that we could recognize the ways in which we have either been the victims or perpetuators of bad religion, and collectively resolve to step into healthier spirituality. In addition to each characteristic of bad religion, I offer an antidote that I hope can provide a springboard to help us better pursue the religion of the Jesus-way.

So here are six of the primary—and perhaps most insidious and damaging—characteristics of bad religion, at least as I see it:

1.Control. This is perhaps the most dangerous and potent characteristic of bad religion: human beings trying to control, manipulate, and coerce other human beings. There are many different psychological and emotional reasons as to why this happens. And truly, attempting to control others is not unique to religion. But it is especially lethal when “God” is recruited to help with the task.

Within a Christian context, though every iteration is susceptible to forms of control, I’ve been noticing a lot lately that it often goes under the guise of “submission.” This is especially pronounced in certain versions of Christianity that talk a lot about submission—wives submitting to their husbands, church members submitting to the elders, etc. But “submission,” at least in my experience, just seems to be a baptized, though perhaps a bit more mild, cover for control.

The most common weapon people use to achieve control are its evil twins: shame and fear. Toxic religion almost always utilizes shame and fear as tools of coercion. We communicate to people that they are less-than or worthless if they don’t behave in certain ways or believe particular ideas. We threaten to disconnect from them if they don’t conform (Brené Brown defines shame as the “fear of disconnection”). We play to their underlying fears and insecurities when we tell them that they are in jeopardy of losing their salvation or eliciting the wrath, disappointment, or anger of God.

Antidote: love and freedom; erring on the side of liberty and grace. When we understand and embrace the love and freedom that characterize God, it allows us to extend them to others. As someone has written: “Only by love is love awakened.”

2. Obsession with rules of personal conduct and piety. This is a corollary to the first characteristic, because it’s one of the main ways control is pursued. Toxic religion places an inordinate amount of focus on rules of personal conduct and piety that have no direct effect on other human beings (or any creatures, whether human or not, for that matter). Fundamentalist religions tend to be overly-focused on what people eat, wear, drink, watch, listen to, and any number of other external behaviors that don’t have any direct bearing on others.

The reason for this is simple: it takes the guesswork out of whether we are successfully controlling people or not and we can easily determine who’s in and who’s out on their basis. It makes us feel safer to be able to easily determine whether people are in our tribe or not.

Antidote: focus primarily on what Jesus defined as the “weightier matters of the law,” justice and mercy and faith (see Matthew 23:23); the greatest commandment, according to Jesus (loving God and loving people—see Matthew 22:36-40); and the “fruit of the Spirit” that the apostle Paul outlined in Galatians 5:22-23. These keep the focus on what’s most important: the way we interact with and relate to ourselves and others.

3. Meritocracy. There are some religions that explicitly acknowledge that salvation or redemption, or whatever term one wants to use to label this idea, are based upon what one does. No Protestant Christian would explicitly say this, of course. And yet, all bad religion, including toxic Christianity, has merit-based salvation-schemes at their core—though it is often subtle and inconspicuous.

As I’ve said in the past, this sort of merit-based approach expresses itself most noticeably in my life not by explicitly thinking that God will love, accept, and forgive me based on what I do; it shows up most noticeably in my implicit belief that other humans will love, accept, and forgive me based on what I do. I don’t obsess much about impressing God; I obsess a lot about impressing others.

Bad religion identifies, usually subconsciously, people’s natural desire for acceptance and then leverages it for merit-based ends. People then hustle to earn acceptance and a place at the table, believing that performance is the key to “salvation” (however we define that). The other side of the coin is perfectionism: people start thinking that their worth, value, and redemption are determined by their ability to perfectly perform or believe or execute.

Antidote: the Gospel—the Good News of God’s unrelenting and unmerited love—repeated over and over again. And just as importantly, our corporate and individual practice of this unmerited love.

4. Black-and-white thinking.There is no gray in bad religion. Everything, or almost everything, is black and white. Intellectual certainty, often defined in Enlightenment-era terms today, provides a strong sense of safety. Questions are not tolerated, and often stifled and shamed, because they feel threatening to our sense of security. The assumption is that all the answers have already been figured out, and the only thing left for people to do is get on board with them. Black-and-white thinking is also a means of control.

Again, there are psychological and emotional reasons for this, and this is not to say that all of life is, in fact, gray. Black and white do exist, but there is probably a lot more gray than most conservative people care to admit. After all, if good religion, as I understand it, is chiefly a relational enterprise, relationships—between both God and humans, and humans and humans— are complicated and nuanced, because people are complicated and nuanced. We also don’t know everything. As the apostle Paul says, “We know in part” (1 Corinthians 13:9-12), so a little humility goes a long way.

Antidote: therapy. Black-and-white/all-or-nothing thinking is often the result of trauma. It provides us with an inner sense of control, in response to traumatic events done to us over which we had no control. Identifying, processing, and healing from trauma, via the help of a trained professional, is critically important if we want to step into the beautiful and messy world of nuance and color.

5. An us-vs-them attitude.Some might posit that religion, by its very nature, must necessarily be characterized by an us-vs-them, in-group/out-group posture. It therefore cannot be avoided due to the very nature of religion. And certainly, there will always be a sense in which religion divides people into groups.

But it doesn’t have to be in an exclusivist or judgmental way. When it expresses itself most acutely in a religious context, adherents have a sense of smugness, superiority, and like they have the inside track to salvation or God’s favor. There is an attitude, often only implicit but sometimes even explicit, that anyone who’s not a part of the group is automatically “lost” or, at the very least, greatly deceived and on the road to perdition.

Antidote: the Gospel—the Good News of God’s inclusive love—repeated over and over again. This is not to deny the exclusive claims of the Jesus-message, but when one reads the Bible and understands how the Gospel fundamentally tears down the “wall of partition,” as Paul explains (see Ephesians 2:14-18), it pulls the rug from underneath our sense of superiority as we realize that salvation is not dependent on being a part of the right group. We thus stop obsessing about being in the right group. Also, listening goes a long way—listening to people’s stories from various walks of life, backgrounds, and perspectives. It humanizes them.

6. Hypocrisy. This seems to be one of the most cited reasons for the rejection of and disdain for religion today. Religious people say one thing but do another. We talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.

Even more destructively, we try to enforce our morality upon others but we ourselves don’t follow that same morality. This happens with great frequency when Christian leaders in America, for example, make a big deal about sexual ethics, only to have it discovered that they themselves have been living a life of great sexual deviance.

It seems that there is an old adage which says that the sins of others we are most outspoken about and critical of are often the ones we ourselves struggle with the most. It makes us feel better about ourselves when we can point out the sins of others, allowing us to evade our own shame and guilt.

Antidote: an environment of humility and recovery. When we normalize an environment of imperfection; when we communicate that it’s all right to be a work in progress, and that we’re all broken, hurting, and damaged people, it allows us to stop hiding and pretending, and it undermines our inclination to be judgmental towards others. After all, the judgment we carry out toward others is the displaced judgment we have toward ourselves. Pursuing recovery and self-compassion frees us from trying to act like someone we’re not.

This is, of course, not an exhaustive list. And one of the most obvious characteristics of bad religion is abuse, though I would describe the above list in many ways as all reflections of religious and emotional abuse on some level. Certainly, there is also a lot of physical and sexual abuse that takes place in religious settings as well, which combines with the above list to make the most toxic and dehumanizing existence a person can experience.

So what happens if you’re part of a religion that has these characteristics? Firstly, if you are experiencing physical or sexual abuse, leave immediately. There is nothing redeeming about such a group. So leave and seek professional help.

Secondly, in the absence of physical or sexual abuse, recognize that every group of people—religious or otherwise—is characterized by the above list to greater or lesser degrees. That is sadly the nature of human beings (I happen to subscribe, at least on some level, to the idea that human beings, while bearing God’s image, have also been marred by sin and therefore regularly engage in selfish and abusive behaviors). So the truth is, as long as we are committed to interacting with other human beings, we will always open ourselves up to toxic forms of relational interaction.

With that said, it seems to me that there are definitely more acute and dangerous forms of group-toxicity, especially within the religious context, and if you look at your own religious experience and recognize the above-list as especially reflective of your journey, then prayerfully reevaluate your place in that religious community and reach out to a person you trust so you can process it with them.

I think also of a recent piece by Russell Moore, who has been one of the most influential figures in the Southern Baptist Convention until recently when an abusive environment finally led to his departure. It seems that his reflections, detailing when it finally clicked for him, are apropos here:

When I was in a toxic and spiritually abusive environment, I found myself coming out of years of second-guessing and finding ways to blame myself for what I was experiencing. It happened while reading a children’s book to my son. I read the final statement at the end of Mo Willems’s Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs: “If you find yourself in the wrong story, leave.” I put away the book and realized, “I’m in the wrong story.”

Perhaps such sentiments can be inspiring to others who find themselves in the wrong story. As he ends the article: “The story of Jesus does not harm the vulnerable. So if you find yourself in the wrong story, you can always leave.”

What do you think? Did I miss something? I’d love for you to leave a comment.

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also about to embark on a DPhil at the University of Oxford (what they call a PhD), focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.