The paradox of religious institutions
Do they carry the spirit or corrupt it?
The New Mindscape #11–2.
In The New Mindscape #11–1, I wrote about the critical self-reflexivity made possible by the Axial figures. But in spite of that, their teachings gradually became social conventions within the religious traditions — Confucianism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and so on. They became traditions that people merely followed out of habit or self-interest. Gradually, new ideas, interpretations and practices evolved that had little in common with the original teachings.
Later on, some people within those traditions started to criticise these customs and ideas, that often had little to do with the teachings of the Founding figure. They would say, ‘We have gone away from the original teachings.’ Years later, many Christians would say, ‘We have strayed far from the teachings of Jesus.’ Many Muslims would say, ‘We have ignored the teachings of Qur’an.’ Some Chinese people would say, ‘We have lost the spirit of Confucius.’ So there is a tension inside these traditions. These great world religions start with a radical innovation, a break from tradition. But they gradually become another social convention and tradition; until reformers propose new innovations with the aim of going back to the original spirit. So new sects and innovations are always appearing within these traditions.
Watch this video clip titled “Why I hate religion but I love Jesus.”
This video reflects that tension between the spirit at the origin of the religion, and the institutions that claim to embody and represent those teachings. In the video, Jefferson Bethke claimed that “Religion is man searching for God, but Jesus is God searching for man.” He claims that ‘The church made people blind, but Jesus made them see” — The church is blinding people through all kinds of dogmatic doctrines and rules, rituals and self-righteousness, that obscure people’s souls.
On the other hand, Jesus gives spiritual life. When people believe in Jesus and have relationship with him, they “see” things clearly, that is to say, they understand the truth about their life, the world and God; they are no longer blind. So Bethke is saying that Jesus makes you see; but the church makes you blind.
He also said, ‘Religious says do, but Jesus says done.’ One way of understanding this is that the church says ‘do this and do that’, whereas Jesus says ‘done’, that is to say, he gives unconditional love. You love Jesus — that’s it. And Jesus loves you — that’s it — done for all eternity. The point of the video can be summarised as the hypocrisy of the church.
He asked, ‘They build so many lavish and magnificent churches, but where are they feeding the poor?’ He criticised that people wear their religion like a badge or sports jersey — just showing off that they are religious and belong to certain churches. But that’s only an external thing. They show their piety on Sundays, but they do the opposite on Saturdays by getting drunk at parties. He said that religion is like “perfume on a casket.” A casket is a coffin. What he meant was that the church is dead, but people are trying to make it smell nice by putting perfume on it — while the core of the church has gotten completely rotten and smelly. Bethke’s criticism of the church is the same criticism that Jesus made of the religion of the Jewish people in his day.
Bethke’s video prompted a lot of online debate and controversy, and some people made videos to refute him. I’d like you to watch a rebuttal embedded below, produced by a Catholic Christian.
Before I continue, it is important to clarify some terms. In the Chinese language, Christianity is one name (基督教), and Catholicism is another name (天主教), which sound like two completely different religions. But in the English language, as well as in the history of Christianity, this is not true. The Roman Catholic Church is a branch — in fact, the largest branch — of Christianity. So Christianity should be better translated as ‘基督宗教’. The Chinese term ‘天主教’ is, in the English language, a branch of Christianity, rather than a different religion independent from it.
What Chinese often call “Christians” ‘基督教’ are called “Protestants” in English. The reason is as follows. In the 16th century, some Christian thinkers and preachers in Europe, notably Martin Luther and John Calvin, made essentially the same criticisms of the church that were made in Bethke’s video. The followers of Luther and Calvin broke off from the Catholic church, and formed their own communities, which became new churches. This is called the “reformation” of Christianity, and those new churches were called “Protestant” — that is to say, “those who protest” the Pope. They were protesting precisely against what Bethke talked about — about the corruption of the church as an institution. They considered that they upheld the true spirit of Christ, while the Catholic church was “false”, because it had lost the original spirit. Instead, they created many new churches — thousands of Protestant sects.
So, the second video is a rebuttal of Bethke’s video, by a Catholic, Fr. Pontifex. His arguments, and those of Catholics generally, include that without the church — without “religion” — there would be no Bible, and therefore no access to the Christian teaching. Indeed, the Bible was compiled by the early church Fathers. The preservation and transmission of these teachings require a certain kind of institution. If there were no such institution to protect, teach, transmit and educate people in the teachings of Jesus, they would have disappeared. He also argues that Jesus hated sin, but not religion: it is not the religion that is guilty; instead, it is the human beings in the church who are committing sin. The sinful side of human nature comes out, even amongst members of the religious community. That’s why he said it was not the fault of the church, but of individual human beings within the church.
Catholics also make an important point about religion’s contribution to many aspects of civilisation. For example, it was the Church that originated the first hospitals as institutions, particularly for the poor. Before that, only the rich and powerful had their private physicians. The Church established the hospital as a form of charity where anybody could go. The modern hospital of today is actually derived from the charity hospitals of the Church.
The idea of a school that is open to everybody, also came from the Church. Before that, education was also restricted to the elite. Again, it was the Church that opened schools to the poor as a form of charity. The idea of the school as an institution for all, came from the church. Even the most famous colleges and universities in Europe began as theology schools for training priests. For example, the Sorbonne University, the oldest university in France, where I got my Ph.D., started of as a theology school. So were the other major universities like Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard. These universities all started as institutions for the transmission of religious knowledge.
Catholics also claim that science itself owes its existence to the Church. During the Middle Ages, which some people called the Dark Ages, where was knowledge preserved when most people were living in ignorance? It was precisely in the monasteries, where monks copied old texts, acquiring education, learning logical reasoning, and applying logical reasoning to the study of the Bible. Logic and rationality, which later were applied in the scientific method, was taught in those churches and monasteries.
Through these examples, Catholics argue that the religious institutions of Christianity have played a fundamental role in the development of civilisation. Therefore, we can’t just throw them away.
On the one hand, then, Bethke’s video clip argues that religion lacks a true spirituality, or rather, the true spirit of Jesus [1]. On the other hand, Fr. Pontifex’s clip argues that it is those religious institutions that ensured that the spirit of Jesus could be spread throughout society, and contributed to the advancement of civilisation.
This is not an issue specific to Christianity. In China, for example, some Buddhist monks are deeply engaged in commercial activities. They have turned their temples into profit-making businesses. This phenomenon has become very controversial. For instance, the Abbot of Shaolin Temple was accused of living an extravagant lifestyle. So, on the one hand, the Buddha taught people to become detached from their material desire, yet these Buddhist monasteries and temples really seem to be lucrative businesses. Many people also burn incense at temples for selfish purposes. Where is the compassion that the Buddha taught? In the West, there have been scandals around some leaders of Tibetan Buddhism [2]. So some people might also say, ‘I hate religion, but I love Buddha.’ The same kind of argument and discussion can also be found among Muslims. There is a widespread feeling among many Muslims that Islamic societies and leaders today have strayed far from the justice and peace advocated by Mohammad .
Religious institutions
This issue speaks to the paradox of the emergence of religious institutions. Religious institutions have arisen to preserve, protect and transmit the teachings of the Axial figures, such as the Buddha and Jesus. But during the course of their development, many religious institutions became completely intertwined with all kinds of political and economic interests. Therefore, the religious institution became inseparable from the web of social, economic and political power. In the next few paragraphs, in a very simplified way, I’m going to go over the problem of understanding this dynamic process of religious transformation.
What existed prior to the Axial Age was totally localised religion. Each tribe had its own religion, each village had its own gods. In these communities, religious practices were completely unseparable from the customs and culture of the local community. Then, the axial figures appeared, such as Jesus, Mohammad, the Buddha, Confucius and Socrates. Those figures had universal teachings, which transcended local concerns and spread beyond a single locality or ethnic group. Their followers came from a variety of backgrounds and communities; they started to acquire a trans-local identity, which was no longer purely local or tribal.
This is what happened, for example, in the Roman Empire. At the time of Jesus, the Roman Empire was a multi-ethnic domain. People of many different ethnicities became Christian. They acquired a new religious identity, which transcended their local and ethnic identities. The same happened in the world of Islam. Mohammad lived in Arabia, where people had strong tribal identities, and were always at war with each other. But after they followed Mohammad, they acquired a new identity as Muslims, which transcended their tribal affiliations. Within a few centuries, millions of people from Spain to Indonesia had acquired a transnational common Islamic identity, forming the Ummah, the community of Islam. The same thing can be said of Buddhism in Asia. Confucianism, as well, in China, provided the overarching framework that started to integrate Buddhism, Daoism and the local customs, cults and religious practices in the Chinese world.
So new religious identities were created around those axial figures and their teachings. But shortly after the death of those religious founders, people had different interpretations of their teachings. For example, what did Jesus or the Buddha come to say, exactly? Who is Jesus, anyway? Was he a normal human? Was he God? Was he the son of God? All kinds of divergences and different understandings arose. Some disciples had deeper understanding and elaborate interpretations; others had a strong personality. The different understandings started to crystallise around certain leading disciples. The rest of the followers simply went along with the leading disciples near to them. But great differences and debates took place between those leading disciples. Sometimes, they split into different sects and branches emerged. Around each of these sects, a distinctive organisation started to emerge. It might be as simple as different master-disciple lineages, or monastic communities, or churches.
As the religious organisation came into being, it needed material resources. It might have started with just a few disciples sitting around a tree. But after a while, as it grew, it needed a building. Land was needed for the building. The land and building needed to be maintained. All kinds of material issues needed to be dealt with. The community might also need permissions or support from the king. So it needed to establish relationships with the political authority. But the king might favour one sect over another. On the other hand, the kind might rely on religious groups for support and legitimacy. Since the religious group had some connection with divine and moral authority, the king might seek the blessing and support from this type of authority. Some religious groups said, ‘If you support us, we will say that you are the king, because God has anointed you.’ Or they might say, “if you don’t support us, you will suffer from the wrath of God”. Thus, political associations and relationships between religious and political forces began. Kings started to rely on religious institutions for legitimacy.
Thus, religious leaders and institutions gave sacred legitimacy to the ruler, while the ruler could give resources and protection essential to the development of the religious institution. Such alliances emerged in most societies, leading to the creation of a religio-political structure, in which the religious and the political dimensions became hard to separate. This is what happened in most large empires and kingdoms, in different forms — whether in Europe, with the Church conferring divine authority on kings; or in China, where Confucianism became the imperial ideology, and Buddhism also maintained close ties with the state. Similar configurations occurred in Islamic and Hindu kingdoms and empires. Some kind of inseparable religio-political structure became the feature of religious organisations and institutions in all kingdoms and empires.
Within one political entity, typically, one religion or sect was favoured or dominant to the exclusion of others. Thus, gradually, in different political units, different religions became dominant. For this reason, a configuration arose in which, in different parts of the world, we would find one dominant religion supported by the state, in which religious institutions were heavily tied with politics and economic resources.
At the beginning, the teachings of the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Mohammad arose at the margins of the political system. The Buddha deliberately rejected the political world. Confucius wandered from one kingdom to another, while no prince fully took to heart his teachings on virtue. Jesus was a mere carpenter in a remote province of the Roman Empire, sentenced to death by its governor. Mohammad was but a merchant in an isolated oasis, lost in the deserts between the Byzantine and Persian empires, persecuted by the clan and tribal chiefs of his own society.
But the universal relevance and transcendence of the teachings of these figures facilitated their spread beyond their original social context. Over the centuries, the communities of their followers became deeply embedded into political systems and structures [3]. Political and economic interests accelerated the division of religious communities by sect, by ethnic group, by nation and by social class. While they had begun as challenges to conventional social structures, morality and authority, they ultimately became the very foundation of social convention and tradition.
Indeed, the followers of these Axial figures formed new social groups, which often fell back into the same patterns of sacralising group identity and politics. In their craving for stable identity and structure, human groups have desperately used religion and quasi-religious political and nationalist ideologies to artificially reinforce social hierarchies and boundaries between insiders and outsiders, generating endless wars and ethnic and religious conflicts.
Such was the condition of religion in most of the world at the dawn of modernity. It was this condition which led to religion being deeply criticised, both from the inside and from the outside, in modern times. The big challenge facing religious communities today, in our increasingly interdependent world is this: will they help people to transcend their differences, or will they reinforce conflicts and divisions between people? The question then became, should religion be reformed, abolished, or renewed? We will consider these questions in the next essays.
[1] Cavey, Bruxy. The end of religion: Encountering the subversive spirituality of Jesus. MennoMedia, Inc., 2020.
[2] Curren, Erik D. Buddha’s not smiling: uncovering corruption at the heart of Tibetan Buddhism today. Motilal Banarsidass Publisher, 2008.
[3] Kuru, Ahmet T. Islam, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment: A global and historical comparison. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
This essay and the New Mindscape Medium series are brought to you by the University of Hong Kong’s Common Core Curriculum Course CCHU9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change, with the support of the Asian Religious Connections research cluster of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
