philosophy, politics, history, indoctrination, legalReligions have stated goals, such as getting more members, and “sharing God’s word”, and that is obviously an agenda. But religion also gets mixed up in wars and sometimes genocides and in personal affairs such as dress, art and other cultural things. These are not stated goals and when asked, individuals involved usually excuse their actions, or claim they were not directly responsible. Yet these things go on generation after generation.
But religion, by definition is an organization or a philosophy, it does not think for itself. Can it truly be said that religion has an agenda? Or should we say that people have agendas and religion is a vehicle, a power structure, for carrying them out? Or some other way of putting it.
I think this is more than just a technical bit of hair splitting. It has implications for how we go about prosecuting individuals involved in the Catholic sex scandal, and how we approach Islamic fundamentalists that are indoctrinating children to become suicide bombers.
Any strongly held concern, whether it is for the salvation of souls, concern for the poor, amount of taxation, or protecting the environment, can be used to manipulate people for other agendas.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.