Militant churches are fascinating and can even be thrilling, much the same way an army can be. Fascinating, that is, to someone who studies them; for those who are their victims, they are merely terrifying. Most religions either go through a militant phase or have militant aspects or wings to them, and I argue that it's theology that produces this militancy, and here the behavior of religion is pretty close to the behavior of most any other ideology.
To put it another way, the trouble stems not from the fact that it's a religion but from the fact that human beings have this tendency to ideology and militancy. If they happen to be religious, then those tendencies get expressed in religious terms. If they happen to be areligious, or live in a society in which the secular arm is the stronger, the tendencies get expressed in the secular idioms of philosophy and whatever-ism.
Capitalism, communism, fascism, monarchialism, even the ideology of democracy (my spellcheck complains democratism is not a word), all are in this sense religions. And we see that all of them have their version of the Church Militant. It's no good condemning religions for their religious wars unless we're prepared to condemn these ideologies for their secular wars. All believe their wars are just, and all are hated by their victims.
Which is another way of me saying what I say over and over again. We have to distinguish between not believing in gods (atheism) and condemning religion, either specifically or generally. There's no point in condemning religion because "religion" doesn't exist. There are only people, doing things. What we are condemning is our fellow human beings. I'm fine with that. Only then does one begin to consider how matters might be amended.
Or, to put it more succinctly: hate the sinner, not the sin. ;-)
Postscript:
Okay, this is funny as hell. I posted the above and Blogger came back with a Google ad . . . for Scientology!
