IS RELIGION A GUARANTEE OF MORAL BEHAVIOR?

(This post was originally published in February 2009.

I made some revisions and am posting it again.)

My answer to the title question is an emphatic NO!

I’m not saying all religious people are immoral. The examples I give below represent a very tiny percentage of the religious community. What I am saying is:

Being a believer is not a guarantee of moral conduct.

"Morality is not determined by the church you attend or the faith you embrace. It is determined by the quality of your character and the positive impact you have on those you meet along your journey." ---as stated on The Immoral Minority blog.

Societal health:
A study by the Journal of Religion & Society (2005) concluded: “Higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies... Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional.”
The Cambridge Companion to Atheism came up with similar findings. High levels of atheism are strongly connected with high levels of societal health: low homicide, poverty, infant mortality and illiteracy rates, high levels of educational attainment, per capita income and gender equality.
In a 1999 study, George Barna, found the percentage of people who have divorced as follows:
Jews = 30%
Born Again Christians = 27%
Mainstream Christians = 24%
Atheists/agnostics = 21%

While I don’t personally believe divorce is immoral, many religious groups think it is a sign of moral weakness.
Ron Barrier, Spokesperson for American Atheists commented: "These findings confirm what I have been saying these last five years... It stands to reason that our families would be dedicated more to each other than to some invisible monitor in the sky. With Atheism, women and men are equally responsible for a healthy marriage... Atheists reject, and rightly so, the primitive patriarchal attitudes so prevalent in many religions with respect to marriage."
James Veverka, in "The moral hypocrisy of the Bible Belt," remarked: "We hear an awful lot from conservatives in the Bible Belt and on the TV about how we all should be living. Certainly a culture that teaches the conservative religious values of the Christian right must have clean living written all over it... It doesn't. Far from it... Joining its history of Biblically correct bigotry and discrimination, it is an area with the highest divorce, murder, STD/HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, single parent homes, infant mortality, and obesity rates in the nation. As a region, the Bible Belt has the poorest health care systems and the lowest rates of high school graduation."

Sex and religion:
James A. Haught: “Western religions have spent millenia inflicting shame, guilt, repression and punishment upon human sexuality... The West presents... a long chronicle of religious hostility to lovers -- for no rational reason... Every censorship effort, every attempt at sexual repression, still comes from religion.” (“Sex and God: Is Religion Twisted?” Free Inquiry, Fall 1997)
Episcopal priest Raymond Lawrence wrote in a national United Methodist journal: "The churches are in danger of evolving into havens for the sexually suppressed or, worse, communities of profound hypocrisy." (Quarterly Review, summer 1985)
Dan Barker, former evangelical minister and current co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation contends that when religious zealots spend so much time thinking and preaching against sex and homosexuality, they become obsessed with it, and eventually they cannot control their sexual urges.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, another co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation) wrote Betrayal of Trust, Clergy Abuse of Children (1988), which chronicles hundreds of cases of sexual abuse by priests, ministers and rabbis in the U.S. I can't help but think that her husband Dan Barker (above) was right.
When an avalanche of accusations against priests, for sexual misconduct, hit my local area, the newspapers were filled with letters to the editor blaming the church for not allowing priests to marry. However, priests who like young boys are not interested in adult women. Others were saying that pedophiles were joining the church to have easy access to children. But one psychiatrist who had treated some of the perpetrators wrote an article that made more sense to me. He argued that men who were Catholic and knew they had a problem, chose to become priests because they thought that if they prayed enough, were pious enough, read the scriptures enough, they would be cured. We see how well that worked.
I was astounded to learn that some bishops were directing priests to deny communion or even recommend excommunication to church members who were openly pro-choice, while at the same time pedophile priests were merely slapped on the wrists and allowed to move to other parishes.


The news media have covered extensively the sexual scandals of Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggert, all three ministers who were either morally bankrupt or, at the least, hypocrites. Thus I will not go into the details here. However, suffice it to say they preached often about moral weakness and sin, then did exactly what they were preaching against.

Morality and politics:
I know our lawmakers cannot be perfect and I don’t expect them to be. But when they campaign on moral issues, then disappoint us, then they are hypocrites.
U.S. Representative Mark Foley (Catholic & Republican) who was known as a crusader against child abuse and exploitation, resigned following a scandal involving teenage male Congressional pages. His replacement, Tim Mahoney (United Methodist & Democrat) ran on a platform of restoring morals to Washington. What did he do? He had a two-year affair with a former staff worker. Just about the time that hit the news, it was discovered that he had been cheating on that mistress with a second mistress. Larry Craig (Methodist and Republican) who repeatedly voted Nay on gay rights issues was caught in an airport restroom, apparently soliciting men for sex.

Religion and crime:
There have been many notorious criminals who were church members. You may remember a serial killer who called himself BTK (Bind, Torture and Kill) in Kansas. David Rader, who killed at least 10 people, was a Deacon and the Congregational President of his Lutheran Church.
David Ludwig, the Pennsylvania teenager who killed his girlfriend’s parents was a home-schooled Christian. Mark Chapman who murdered John Lennon had been described by his friends as a “Jesus freak.”

One of the evilest Christians I know of is Fred Phelps, the preacher who pickets and disrupts military funerals. He physically and psychologically abused his wife and all of his children. The only reason he is not in jail is that he convinced his sons that if they told the truth and he was put on trail, that they would go to hell. Phelps is convinced homosexuals are responsible for all the evils in the world. (His son Nate's blog, A Journey to Reason, tells much of his journey from his father's home to atheism. Read his speech to the American Atheists HERE.)
In a report from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (1997) approximately 80% of the U.S. population claimed some affiliation with a religious group and 80% of the U.S. prison population stated a religious preference. Logical, right? But then why, if (at that time) 10% of the general population claimed to be atheist, only 0.2% of the prison population said they were atheists? There are many religious people who argue that prisoners choose to say they are religious because there are benefits to doing that in prison. If that is so, then our prison system is violating the church/state separation provision of the Constitution.

One of the biggest crimes of all, which senselessly kills innocent people every day, is terrorism. Many people don't want to admit that the terrorists are religious people, but that is exactly what they are. They may be of a different religion than those who are shocked by their immoral acts, but as I pointed out in a previous post, Christians killed at least 50,000 people, just as senselessly during the 1st Crusade, and did it in the name of Christ.

Steve Allen: “It is frequently argued that a return to formal religion is the solution to the problem [of corruption.] But the prescription leaves something to be desired, for one finds practically no formal humanists, agnostics, or atheists in the ranks of the corrupt. Most of the embezzlers, swindlers, con-men and thieves... are card carrying members of one religion’s denomination or another that formally pays respect to the Old and/or New Testament.” (Ripoff, a look at corruption in America, 1979)

I repeat, I’m not saying all religious people are immoral. These cases represent very few people among the religious. What I am saying is that being religious is not a guarantee of moral conduct.

William Lobdell: “To the chagrin of evangelical pollsters and leaders, Christians–for the most part–don’t act any differently than atheists. And, in fact, in some categories (divorce rates and racism) evangelicals act worst.”

I know most religious people are good, honest, ethical people. Most non-religious people I know are also good, honest and ethical, yet they aren’t that way because they fear retribution in the afterlife.

copyright 2010 C. Woods

Click on this link for an article by Paula Kirby: "Morality: no gods required."

Click on this link for an article by Austin Cline: "Irreligious People Just as Ethical as Religious Churchgoers"

CHRISTIANS BEHAVING BADLY #14 - Clergy Sexual Abuse

This is a milestone: my 100th post.

One evening in the 1990's when I visited my mother, the TV news presented a segment about the current flurry of priests accused of sexual abuse.

My mother, who was in her 80's at the time, had always been embarrassed to talk about sex, but she suddenly opened up. She told me something I already knew, that Catholic clergy were not the only ones who were sexual predators.

I knew that most sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy was with adult women. Next came heterosexual abuse of girls. The Catholic church has been the one to receive most of the attention in sexual abuse cases, and I wouldn't doubt that is ---at least in part --- because most of the abuse has been homosexual. When it is heterosexual, I'm sure many don't consider the abuse to be quite as bad. But any child abuse is abuse. Sexual abuse is sexual abuse whether it be homosexual, heterosexual, with adults or children.

My mother had been a Christian of some Protestant sect or other her entire life. She started by telling me that in the 1960's at her current Presbyterian church, the teenaged daughter of her friend, Mrs. M., had been wooed by the married minister in charge of Christian education. The daughter was not a particularly savvy girl, which probably made her the perfect prey.

At first the minister paid extra attention to her. Her parents were pleased that he had taken the girl under his wing. Her parents were unaware when the attention had escalated to kissing and fondling. They found out it had progressed to intercourse after Mrs. M. asked her daughter about a ring she wore one day.

The girl finally admitted that the minister had given her the ring with a promise to leave his wife and marry her. She had just turned 16.

It took just a few minutes for Mrs. M. to be on the phone with the head pastor and several church deacons.

When it all came to light, unsurprisingly the minister had been asked to leave his previous parish for similar behaviors. And, in a flash, he was transferred to another church where he probably repeated his preadatory behaviors.

Any church that ignores such behavior, or slaps the offenders on theirs wrists and passes them on to other churches, shares in the abuse.

Then my mother told me a story of her own experiences with a predatory minister.

My mother's parents were deeply involved in their local church. My grandfather was the church treasurer and my grandmother taught Sunday school, helped to clean the church, and cooked for every church social event. They were good friends with Reverend X. and his wife and often visited at each others' homes.

My grandparents often asked one of their children to walk to the church to deliver bookkeeping sheets or cookies for a meeting. My mother told me that starting around the time she was 12, when she arrived alone, the minister would grab her and kiss her. At first she didn't understand what he was trying to do, but she squirmed away from him. Afterward, she tried to convince one of her sisters to accompany her to the church or else she would try to sneak in and out without Reverend X. noticing her. She was not always successful.

My mother was a sickly child and very shy. She was also small and frail. I'm sure the minister saw her as an easy victim.

My mother was afraid to tell her parents, after all they were friends of the minister and his wife. She was afraid no one would believe her. And she feared that if the incidents became public, she would be blamed for breaking up the minister's family. So she said nothing. This went on for more than 12 years and stopped only when she married my father, moved to a different neighborhood, and attended a different church.

Once, before she was married, she exited a bus on a dark evening on the way home from work. Walking to her home, she found a girl sitting on concrete steps crying. My mother didn't know the girl well, but stopped to ask if she could help. The girl was reluctant to speak to my mother, but finally admitted that Reverend X. had exposed himself to her. My mother told her about her own experiences. They both decided not to tell anyone else.

And that was the only person my mother had confided in until she told me her story more than 6 decades later. She had never told my father.

(Even though the creepy minister is long dead, I write "Reverend X" instead of his real name because some of his children and/or grandchildren are still living. There is no point in embarrassing them about something that happened so long ago and that they had no part in.)

The reason I am writing about this now, is that I recently happened upon a box of old books I hadn't looked at since my mother's death.

In one book I found this hand-written inscription:

"My mother's full name

May the grace of God aid you in the search for better things.

Your friend and pastor,

Xxxxxxx X. Xxxxx

April 10, 1927"

I hope my mother found better things than this creep once she was able to distance herself from him.

I wouldn't doubt that a part of my mother's revulsion of speaking about sex was because of the era in which she grew up, but I'm sure some of it was due to the behaviors of this sexual predator. He certainly betrayed the trust of two young girls and probably many more of his parishioners, as well as that of his own family.

In my attempt to show that being religious
is not a guarantee of moral behavior,
this post is part of a series of reports featuring
the bad behavior of religious people, past or present....

Look for other posts showing the bad behavior
perpetrated by members of other religious groups.

CHRISTIANS BEHAVING BADLY #4 clergy crime

BLACK COLLAR CRIME

In my attempt to show that being religious
is not a guarantee of moral behavior,
this post is a part of my series of reports featuring the
bad behavior of religious people, past or present....

Look for other posts showing the bad behavior
perpetrated by members of other religious groups.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation puts out a newspaper-sized publication Freethought Today ten times a year. In each issue, a 2-page spread is devoted to their “Black Collar Crime Blotter” ---crimes committed mostly by ministers, priests, rabbis, choir directors, deacons, Sunday School teachers, but also some by church employees and other religious individuals.

In the June/July 2008 edition (for example), 31 crimes were listed under arrested/charged, an additional 13 perpetrators convicted, 13 sentenced, 11 civil suits filed, 2 civil suits settled, 2 additional updates on other legal issues and one “Creep of the Month.”
The “Creep of the Month” was a CA minister accused of murder, attempted murder, theft and embezzlement in a scheme to inherit an elderly gentleman’s fortune.
Predictably, the majority of crimes are sex-related (rape, sexual assault, sexual abuse, lewd conduct, molestation, child pornography). In that same issue, other crimes included embezzling church funds, armed robbery, failure to file income taxes, and theft.
A female minister in GA was charged with conspiracy, money laundering, making false statements and fraud. She had grossed over $500,000 by targeting illegal aliens and charging them for legal papers ---but what they got were fake documents.

In a case of misapplication of federal funds, $450,000 intended for a “faith-based-initiative” social service was diverted to the church’s building fund and to pay for the minister’s private debts and his son’s wedding reception.
In the January/February 2009 issue, 15 crimes were listed under arrested/charged, an additional 11 sentenced, 5 civil suits filed, 2 suits settled, 1 update on another legal issue and a report of the Ohio head of the governor's faith-based initiative charged with involvement in a prostitution ring.
The “Creep of the Month” was a Mormon Bishop from UT charged with abuse of three sisters aged 6 to 12.
The crimes listed in Freethought Today are submitted by FFRF members from newspapers nationwide. The reported incidents probably aren’t even close to the number of crimes committed by "good Christians," just the ones reported to the FFRF by members and limited to those that fit on the two pages devoted to such crimes.

The FFRF subtitles this section of their publication "By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them."

AMEN!

Order a subscription, a sample copy, or a back issue of

Freethought Today or become a member at the FFRF website.