How Religion Has Been – and Still Is – Used for Bigotry

The current U.S. administration has turned the use of religion into an art form. Their modus operandi is to mainstream the idea that “Christianity” truly means doing ones best to destroy those over which they want to feel superior.

Even those who object to it all have adopted their language and call what they are doing “Christian” Nationalism as if to confirm that what these users of religion are calling for isn’t just one sectarian religious interpretation of everything historically that has been called Christian but somehow represents all or at least the truth of what “Christianity” is.

The use of “Christianity” or any of the religions to support the powerful, those who wish to impose their beliefs on everyone else, and those who are protecting their own financial and publicity portfolios has a long worldwide history that’s as old as we have human records. And it actually doesn’t have its origins in any of the religions it uses.

Yet people on most sides of debates about religions continue to blame it for all sorts of good and bad behaviors. Both those who credit religion or the religions for what they consider positive outcomes and those who criticize it for negative ones both ignore the rest of what all goes into people’s developments of their viewpoints besides their religious beliefs.

Think of all that surrounds anyone in the cultures and societies in which they’ve been raised. From the beginning of every human life, the values and attitudes coming from the people and institutions around them become so conditioning that they are lucky if they are questioned by anyone. And these include not only personal family ideologies, attitudes, and behaviors, but also those taught by a society’s media.

Only one set of those institutions is the most popular religion in a pluralistic society or, in more monolithic ones, the religion that everyone around them accepts is. And in any case, historically that is the religiom that politicians, governments, financial institutions, educational institutions, and other social institutions exploit or capitulate to.

Historically rare has been the existence of a secular government, for example, that isn’t tied to some state religion that sanctifies what the government wants to do anyway. Think kings, emperors, tsars, premiers, and even presidents around the world who ensured religion’s sanctification of their existence and their exploits by financially and otherwise patronizing religious leaders.

Claiming that religion supports your cause gives some sort of divine dimension to whatever it is you want to do, whether or not the religion's scriptures, traditions, or histories actually do or not. And there were "approved" religious thinkers in most of the religions who helped justify whatever war, inquisition, destruction of political enemies, or other atrocities the powers that be set their mind to. Had they not, they would experience consequences from those real powers.

So here many of us are today, in 2026, in a country founded on freedom of and from religion, where its leadership is claiming that it was founded as a “Christian” nation and with leaders ready to enforce a version of Christianity that sanctifies what they want to do in any case.

The same Bible that liberators found inspiration in to spread equality, inclusiveness, and personal growth and even to fight leaders is being used to promote racial supremacy and the demonization of fellow human beings, as it also keeps the very perpetrators from healing from their own past personal and societal hurts and pains.

We also know historically that religion doesn’t have to be this way, that other religious people have stood up and objected to those claiming that it must be so or that the truth of their religion lies in exclusivism and bigotry. These others have seldom had the biggest voices compared to the official versions of their religion, but they remind us that there are alternatives to dominant narratives of religious racism, religious homophobia, religious transphobia, religious violence, and religious sexism.

Can you imagine if those who don’t want to do the work examining the personal sources of their bigotry had no one or nothing else to blame their bigotry on than their own prejudices, insecurities, misunderstandings, and failures? It would mean that they would have to examine themselves, face their own demons, and do some very difficult healing work.

It would mean that they would have to learn what real repentance is – not only asking those they’ve hurt for forgiveness but correcting the result of their mistakes. It would mean showing to all around them that they are imperfect people who’ve had flawed ideas – just as every human has in some ways, but also courageous models for others about how to heal from one’s own bigotry. 

As the Greek word translated repentance (metánoia) in the New Testament literally means, it would mean “turning their lives around.” It would be practicing something like the 8,^th 9,^th and 10^th of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous:

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

And it would mean no longer blaming God, the scriptures, history, tradition, or religious institutions for their bigotry but taking full responsibility. For that’s how religion gets used by bigots – to dodge personal responsibility the way the non-recovering alcoholic does who says: “The liquor made me do it.”

Those of us who stand outside such a mindset and vow to fight against racial, homophobic, transphobic, sexist and other discrimination need to take responsibility for our use of religion. That means modeling alternatives, religious or not, that demonstrate to the world those other ways that include humanity in all its diversity.

For, the evidence is clear: our world relishes diversity. To fight diversity is to fight against all of Reality.