RESEARCH WORK: Religion, Race, and Human Unity
An Analytical Study on the Origins, Institutional Power, and Divisive Impact of Faith in Human Civilization
Eric Paddy Boso
Institutional Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Human Studies
University of Notre Dame, Indiana, U.S.A
Course / Program
Religious and Cultural Studies / Independent Research
Date of Submission:
October 2025
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to:
Eric Paddy Boso, cujoe999x1@yahoo.com
This project traces the genesis of religion and its continuation as a factor in race, tribal, and human strife, founded upon anthropological, theological, and sociological theory. The book tracks religion's evolution as a reaction to mystery, fear, and the quest for cosmic order, and discusses how this religious impulse evolved into institutionalized belief systems that eventually came to determine tribal and racial identity. By combining classical anthropological theory?such as ?mile Durkheim's functionalism, Edward Tylor's animism, and Mircea Eliade's conception of the sacred?with theological analysis from John Mbiti, Karl Barth, and Reinhold Niebuhr, the research illustrates that religion, though initially unifying, manifested as a means for differentiation and hierarchy. The essay explores the initiation of children into received religious traditions as a mechanism of cultural continuity that, simultaneously, entrenches social boundaries. Through both ancient and contemporary case studies?among which are African indigenous religion and colonial Christianity, the Semitic monotheistic traditions, and racialized theologies of modern Europe?the book examines critically how religious identity became indistinguishable from tribal and race consciousness. Ultimately, this book argues that the roots of division are not to be found in divine revelation but in human interpretation, cultural heritage, and power structures. It ends with a call for a global spiritual ethic of empathy and self-awareness, one capable of transcending the boundaries inherited and returning religion to its purpose: uniting humanity rather than further dividing it.
Religion; Race; Tribal Identity; Institutional Power; Theology; Colonialism; Faith and Control; Social Division; Human Unity; Comparative Religion; Philosophy of Faith; Sociology of Religion; Universal Consciousness; Spiritual Liberation; Interfaith Dialogue
Introduction
The concept of religion has been one of the most enduring and revolutionary ideas in human history. It has varied from prehistoric rituals practiced under open skies to highly complex theological frameworks ritualized in temples, churches, and mosques, shaping how humanity understands existence, ethics, and social identity. Yet alongside its spiritual power to invoke compassion and transcendence lies a paradoxical legacy: religion has also been one of the primary markers of difference?dividing tribes, races, and nations. Since the beginning of time, groups have used divine sanction to define identity, establish hierarchy, and justify domination. What began as a universal search for meaning has, in many instances, become a force for separation.
In this project, religion is assumed to be the human search for meaning and transcendence that is ongoing?a cultural and moral system through which humans make sense of life, build identity, and form community. In fulfilling these roles, however, religion also establishes boundaries of belief and belonging and is therefore a unifying as well as a dividing force in human society. This dual nature of religion?to bind and to break, to include and to exclude?is the supreme concern of this inquiry.
The origins of religion are intertwined with the earliest modes of human consciousness. Anthropologists Edward Burnett Tylor and James George Frazer speculated that primitive humans employed religious imagination to account for natural phenomena, thus creating animistic beliefs and ritual practices that gave meaning to their world experience (Tylor 12; Frazer 8). Religion was thus not superstition, but an adaptive social system?a means of accounting for the unknown and guaranteeing communal solidarity. ?mile Durkheim later expanded this view, describing religion as a collective representation of society itself, with the sacred being the symbol of social unity (Durkheim 47). In this case, the sacred functions to unite members of a group, both providing moral order and cultural continuity. But the same mechanisms that fostered internal cohesion also delineated the boundaries of belonging, distinguishing the faithful from the stranger and establishing the first forms of tribal and ethnic identity.
As human civilizations expanded, the role of religion evolved from survival ritual to institutionalized theology, more often than not reflecting the political and ethnic hierarchies of the societies that practiced it. In ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley, gods became associated with particular lands, peoples, and rulers. Then, through the emergence of monotheism in the Hebrews and subsequently in Christianity and Islam, divine truth became more exclusionary?claimed by particular nations or communities as absolute. "Chosen people," a term originally theological in implication, became entangled with ethnocentric presuppositions obscuring the difference between spiritual covenant and racial privilege. Mircea Eliade's opposition between the "sacred" and the "profane" underscores this transformation: religion, in defining the sacred, necessarily also defines the non-sacred?and by extension, the who-is-not (Eliade 23).
The reproduction of such boundaries occurs most powerfully through the religious socialization of children. Through baptism and circumcision, naming ceremonies and Quranic study, children learn religious identity before they achieve independent understanding. John Mbiti notes that religion in African cultures is not a sector of life but its texture?"it permeates all departments of life so fully that it is not easy or possible always to isolate it" (Mbiti 2). This extent of integration means that one's religious identity is often inseparable from one's tribe, language, and heritage. What begins as a system of meaning then becomes a system of inheritance?a system that structures cultural identity but also reinforces tribal and racial lines.
What this research, therefore, tries to do is investigate the origin of religion not merely as a religious phenomenon but as a sociocultural phenomenon that has had such an enormous influence on human division. It seeks to explore how theological doctrine, ritual practice, and inherited systems of belief contributed to the formation of racial and tribal identities across civilizations. In bringing classical anthropological theory and modern theological reflection into dialogue, the study investigates the historical process by which religion?formerly a common language of human awe?came to contribute to the construction of hierarchies of belonging. Lastly, the book proposes that the problem lies not with the divine nature of religion but with its historical association with human fear, power, and identity seeking. One must come to terms with this evolution in order to envision religion as a force of reconciliation rather than division.
Early Literature Review
Scholarly research on the emergence and functions of religion spans a number of disciplines, such as anthropology and sociology, theology, and psychology. Fundamental theories in each discipline provide distinctive yet complementary understanding of how religion emerged, evolved, and influenced human identity. The literature review here provides the major intellectual traditions informing the present research, highlighting the classical anthropological theorists, sociological accounts, and theological criticisms of religion's relationship to human division.
1. Anthropological Foundations: Religion as Cultural Adaptation
Edward Burnett Tylor's Primitive Culture (1871) has been widely recognized as one of the earliest systematic attempts to explain the origin of religion. Tylor devised the animism theory, arguing that early humans developed a belief in spiritual beings as a logical explanation for dreams, death, and natural phenomena (Tylor 12?15). Religion, in his account, was not irrational but a primitive form of intellectual reasoning?a battle to impose order upon experience in a world ruled by chance. His contemporary James George Frazer elaborated this thesis in The Golden Bough (1890), describing religion as an evolutionary stage in human thought that followed magic and preceded science (Frazer 8?10). For both theorists, religion started out as a common human endeavor to establish order in nature, but their evolutionary schemes also implied a hierarchy between "primitive" and "civilized" religions, a thesis that would subsequently be faulted for its ethnocentric presumptions.
In the twentieth century, Mircea Eliade deepened the anthropological study of religion by emphasizing its existential and symbolic importance. In The Sacred and the Profane (1957), Eliade characterized religion as the experience of the sacred by man?a dimension of reality that provides meaning and orientation (Eliade 10?13). Religious awareness, he thought, is not merely social but ontological, having its foundation in the human quest for transcendence. However, Eliade also noted that such an arrangement of sacred space and time inevitably divides the sacred community from the profane world, establishing symbolic boundaries that can reinforce exclusivity. This is a crucial point to understanding how religious systems, even while they unify internally, are complicit in social differentiation externally.
2. Sociological Interpretations: Religion as Social Cohesion and Control
?mile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) shifted the focus from the metaphysical to the social. Religion is for Durkheim more a social expression of collective solidarity than a belief in supernatural beings (Durkheim 47?49). The divide between the sacred and the profane reflects the chasm between communal ideals and private interests. Societies symbolically worship themselves when they worship the sacred. Religion is thus the moral glue of society?creating shared norms, values, and identity. Yet Durkheim's theory also implies that the very processes that generate social cohesion within a group can exclude those who do not belong to it. The boundaries of the sacred community mirror the boundaries of the tribe, thereby offering a sociological explanation for religion's role in racial and ethnic differentiation.
Later sociologists and psychologists elaborated on this viewpoint. Sigmund Freud, in Totem and Taboo (1913), accounted for religion in terms of the projection of repressed familial desires and social anxieties. For all its controversy, Freud's psychoanalytic theory highlighted the manner in which guilt, fear, and authority are entangled in religious consciousness, reproducing conformity to the social order. Carl Jung, by contrast, considered religion an archetypal manifestation of the collective unconscious?a primal manifestation of humanity's internal search for wholeness. Both narratives underscore the deeply psychological dimensions of religious identity that suggest tribal and racial identities in religion are not merely cultural but emotional and subconscious as well.
3. Theological Reflections: Faith, Power, and Inherited Identity
While anthropologists and sociologists studied religion as a human institution, theologians have grappled with its spiritual and ethical implications. Karl Barth, writing in the aftermath of European nationalism and war, warned against conflating divine revelation with cultural identity. In Church Dogmatics (1932?1967), Barth argued that wherever religion is a human undertaking rather than an act of divine grace, religion degenerates into idolatry?a attempt to justify human power in God's name (Barth 112). Reinhold Niebuhr echoed this warning in The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941), asserting that pride?the elevation of one?s group, race, or nation to divine status?is the root of both sin and social injustice (Niebuhr 85). Their theological critiques expose how easily religion can be co-opted into legitimizing systems of inequality.
In African theological discourse, John S. Mbiti?s African Religions and Philosophy (1969) remains seminal. Mbiti demonstrated how African traditional religions are profoundly communal and inseparable from kinship, land, and ancestry (Mbiti 1?4). This interrelatedness, in its formation of robust social cohesion, also demonstrates how religious identity becomes inseparable from tribal identity. Kwame Bediako later developed this observation in Theology and Identity (1992), arguing that African Christianity must take account of both the strength and the danger of received religious awareness. Together, these theorists highlight the paradox at the center of this research: religion as a source of belonging and of exclusion.
4. Synthesis
Throughout these theoretical traditions, a common thread exists: religion starts as a profoundly human enterprise to fashion meaning, order, and identity. But in fulfilling these functions, it must draw boundaries?sacred/profane, believer/unbeliever, tribe/outsider, saved/condemned. The anthropological approach initially reveals religion as a cultural necessity; the sociological approach exposes its social power; and theological examination denudes it of its moral traps. This dialectic must be understood if religion is to be reinterpreted not as an instrument of conflict but as a potential foundation of human unity.
Research Questions
The research questions guiding this research are:
1. What are the major anthropological, sociological, and theological explanations for the emergence and function of religion in human society?
2. In what ways have religious doctrines, creeds, and ritual practices contributed to the construction of tribal and racial identities?
3. How has religion historically functioned both as a moral impulse toward unity and as a source of social cleavage?
4. How does religious initiation and inheritance assist in consolidating collective identity and intergroup boundaries?
5. In what ways can religion be reinterpreted or reimagined to promote human reconciliation, equality, and solidarity rather than separation?
6. Where human beings are living together with access to the same resources, institutions, and legal frameworks?such as food, markets, schools, hospitals, and laws of nature?what precisely is the contribution made by religion to social behavior, moral action, and the construction of group boundaries?
Importance of the Study
The study is significant for several reasons.
Academically, it contributes to the interdisciplinary research of religion by bridging anthropological, sociological, and theological perspectives. With its examination of how religion in the past has both unified and divided people, the book offers a nuanced conceptual framework that can inform future studies of religion, identity, and social formations.
Socially, the study illuminates the mechanisms through which religious systems of belief have influenced tribal, racial, and cultural identity. An understanding of these processes informs contemporary conflicts rooted in religious and ethnic divisions, offering possibilities for dialogue, reconciliation, and inclusive policy development.
Morally and philosophically, the research highlights the potential of religion as a force for human unity rather than division. By throwing into relief its two-sidedness?as both a dividing and unifying force?the study invites religious communities, leaders, and thinkers to reconsider how religion might be interpreted and lived in ways that foster compassion, justice, and equality.
Last, this study is not just concerned with analyzing religion's historical impact but also with proposing a vision in which its redemptive moral and spiritual potential could be accessed for the common good.
Part II: The Origin of Religion and the Evolution of Tribal Religions
1. The Dawn of Religious Awareness
The human search for meaning antedates civilization itself. Paleolithic graves?such as at Shanidar Cave (Iraq) and Sungir (Russia)?have provided archaeological evidence of ritual and reverence in early burials, indicating a belief in spiritual continuity beyond death. Such practices, Edward B. Tylor contends, formed the basis of animism, the earliest discernible religion, in which natural phenomena and ancestral spirits were imbued with agency (Tylor 17). For Tylor and his contemporaries, religion did not develop from divine revelation but from the intellectual effort of man to explain dreams, death, and the mysteries of life.
Yet even in this primitive existence, this awareness was not merely cognitive?it was existential. Mircea Eliade referred to this as the "discovery of the sacred," a rip in the ordinary that allowed early humans to discover their place in a universe of meaning (Eliade 21). Eliade's hypothesis is that the sacred, rather than the divine itself, was the original human response to life's uncertainty. Eventually, this awareness of the sacred became focused in myth, ritual, and common belief?establishing religion both as a psychological necessity and as a social force.
Theologically, most traditions have interpreted this primordial awareness as the first encounter of humanity with divine reality. The Judeo-Christian tradition, for instance, reads the Genesis story as man's primal awareness of the existence of God, after which followed the distortion of disobedience and self-will. But anthropologically interpreted, however, this "fall" can be understood as the transition from pure consciousness of unity with the divine to fragmented consciousness of fear and separation?modes that then required religion as a mediating agency between man and the sacred.
2. From Universal Spirit to Tribal Deity
As human societies settled into communities, religion evolved from a general sense of the sacred to definite systems in combination with tribe, territory, and kinship. ?mile Durkheim's seminal The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) argued that the character of religion is social: "The god of the clan is the clan itself, transfigured and imagined in symbolic form" (Durkheim 236). Religion was thus a mirror of social solidarity, wherein common identity was ritually celebrated in shared myth and ritual.
In Africa, for example, the indigenous religions were deeply embedded in kinship and land. John Mbiti has remarked that African spirituality is "not a separate department of life" but an inclusive worldview uniting the living, the dead, and the unborn (Mbiti 2). The tribe's god, ancestor, or spirit represented both social identity and spiritual power. To lack a tribe?a tribe and its gods?was to be homeless spiritually. The same dynamics appeared in the Mesopotamian and Greek civilizations that followed, where city-states assumed patron deities?Ishtar for Babylon, Athena for Athens?as symbols of communal identity.
Theologically, this stage reveals the double-edged nature of religion: even while it bound communities together, it also delineated the edges of belonging. The "chosen people" motif, as in the ancient Israelite covenant theology, established deep moral and existential solidarity but also bred exclusivity. Religion was now a tool of inclusion and exclusion, specifying who was "of the covenant" and who was not. This mechanism?initially intended to protect faith?laid the foundation for future racial and tribal exclusions on the basis of divine approval.
3. Case Studies in the Tribalization of Faith
a. Africa: The Sacred and the Social
In Sub-Saharan Africa, the interdependence of religion and tribe and tribe and religion remained uninterrupted even in spite of colonial interventions. For instance, among the Akan of Ghana, ancestor worship and stool worship explicitly tied political legitimacy to spiritual continuity. The Asantehene (king) ruled not merely as a political leader but as the bridge between the living and the ancestral spirits. When Islam and Christianity came, their early missionaries routinely did not distinguish between spiritual message and European or Arab ethnic superiority, creating hybrid religions that replicated colonial hierarchies (Bediako 43). Religion thus became a contested space?both a source of liberation and an instrument of subjugation.
b. The Middle East: Monotheism and Chosen Identity
In the Semitic world, the emergence of monotheism?starting with Abrahamic religions?reconfigured the tribal framework into a theological one. The biblical covenant with Yahweh and Israel was a universal moral law but ethnically restricted in application. Later prophetic traditions, such as those of Isaiah, tended to open up this identity to go beyond race, foreshadowing the universalism of Christianity. Yet, as Reinhold Niebuhr observes, "the universal claims of religion are usually betrayed by the self-interest of its followers" (Niebuhr 71). Christianity's later adoption by empire, and Islam's by caliphate, transformed universal ideals into instruments of domination.
c. Europe and Asia: The Institutionalization of Faith
As Christendom emerged in Europe, religion became entangled with political and racial ideology. The "divine right of kings" and the racialized theology of colonialism positioned Christianity as a spiritual as well as a civilizing force. Asian religions such as Hinduism and Shintoism created internal hierarchies?such as caste and imperial lineage?reflecting social stratification. So, across civilizations, religion evolved from a source of spiritual orientation to an identity politics machine.
4. Integrated Theological Reflection
Theologically, one may argue that this process of tribalization was not an error but a stage in spiritual maturity. Karl Barth's theology of revelation discerns divine truth to penetrate history through definite forms?language, culture, and covenant?only to go beyond them in Christ. Similarly, African theologian Kwame Bediako discerns the encounter between Christianity and African traditional religion as a "re-indigenization of faith," reclaiming the universality of the Gospel in local identity (Bediako 51).
But the danger arises when the particular is absolutized. When the god of a tribe is mistaken for the God of all, religion ceases to be revelation and becomes ideology. Then faith divides rather than unites, justifying racism, ethnocentrism, and exclusion. The ancient human desire to connect with the sacred?the very origin of religion?thus runs the risk of perversion, becoming a force for division.
5. Transitional Conclusion
The genesis of religion was a reaction to the mystery of existence; its development into tribal faiths was a reaction to the mystery of affiliation. Both urges?religious and social?are valid, but when combined with authority, they create discord. As the following section will discuss, the socialization of children into received religion reproduces this process, planting racial and tribal awareness at the psychological level years before the emergence of moral agency. Religion, therefore, must be reinterpreted not merely as belief, but as inheritance?a holy narrative carried in the bloodlines of memory and identity.
Part III: Child Initiation, Identity Formation, and the Inheritance of Faith
1. The Sacred Birthright: Religion as InheritanceReligion in the ancient world was not a matter of choice but an inheritance. To be born within a tribe or community was to be born into its gods, rituals, and sacred responsibilities. As John Mbiti observes, in prehistoric Africa, "no one is born a vacuum; everyone is born into the spiritual heritage of the community" (African Religions and Philosophy 3). Religious identity was thus a sacred birthright, one that was inseparable from bloodline and kinship.
This understanding was not unique to Africa. Among the Hebrews, Yahweh's covenant with Israel was transmitted biologically and ritually: all boys were circumcised on the eighth day, setting them as part of the divine covenant (Genesis 17:10?14). Among the Vedic people of India, the child's caste and dharma were determined at birth, situating each person within a cosmic hierarchy that assigned spiritual duties from birth. Religion therefore served as a genealogical system, connecting religion, family, and destiny.
Anthropologically, the system ensured cultural continuity. The tribe was able to pass on its values, cosmology, and moral order from generation to generation through ritualized instruction. Theologically, it was paradoxical: religion became both sacred tradition and social boundary. What was initially communal expression of unity with the divine over time evolved into an inherited identity marker ? one that would eventually formalize divisions between tribes and races.
2. Initiation as Social and Spiritual Induction
The process of initiation marked the child's formal entry into religious and social life. Initiation ceremonies were universal ? from African puberty initiations to Hebrew bar mitzvas and Greco-Roman mystery cuts ? each with the function of turning the child from an isolated biological being into a moral and spiritual agent in the society. ?mile Durkheim stated that rituals of this type function as "moral rebirths," where the initiate internalizes the collective conscience (Durkheim 238).
In African societies, initiation was pedagogical and not symbolic. For the Kikuyu of Kenya, initiation of the males was circumcision coupled with moral teaching and tribal history (Mbiti 114). For the Dogon of Mali, teaching in creation cosmology, ancestor myths, and oral tradition secret knowledge was imparted to the initiates. Conversion was not the goal, but transmission: that the child had absorbed the worldview of the tribe.
In Jewish culture, training of children was enshrined in the Shema: "And these words? you shall teach them diligently to your children" (Deuteronomy 6:6?7). Religious education began at home, identifying God's law with personal identity. Christianity inherited this tradition in baptism, the symbolic ritual of spiritual birth into the "body of Christ." In each of these systems, initiation during childhood was the moment when divine and social belongingness merged and religion could no longer be distinguished from personal identity.
3. Case Studies in Traditional Child Initiation
a. African Initiation Systems
Across Sub-Saharan Africa, initiation ceremonies were rites of passage to manhood and spirituality. As an example, the Xhosa ulwaluko (male circumcision) and West Africa's Sande and Poro societies initiated members into tribal morals, man-woman roles, and the moral order of the cosmos. These rituals re-established unity within the tribe but hardened boundaries between "insiders" and "outsiders." The uninitiated were not merely socially immature but spiritually uncompleted as well.
Kwame Bediako interprets this as a "cultural theology" system of culture in which religious truth is inextricably bound up with social belonging (Theology and Identity 54). But, as later colonial experiences demonstrated, this trend could also lead to insularity ? the belief that religious authenticity lies with ethnicity, birthright, or land. Thus initiation both maintained tradition and cultivated difference.
b. The Hebrew Covenant and Circumcision
The Hebrew practice of circumcision was at once bodily sign and covenant sign. It distinguished the Israelites from the peoples around them and symbolized divine election. The transmission of the rite to every male child worked to ensure that religious identity was not learned but transmitted. The covenant was written "not on the heart, but in the flesh," thereby reconciling the biological and theological bases of membership. As Paul afterward observed in his epistles, the identical sign had become the grounds of distinction among Jews and Gentiles (Romans 2:25?29).
Theologically, the Abrahamic covenant shows how institutionalized divine revelation can form exclusionary identity. The sign of the covenant, as sacred as it was, became a boundary?dividing chosen from unchosen.
c. Christian Infant Baptism
The Christian form of child initiation in outdooring ritual and infant baptism was an expansion of this inheritance theology. Whether or not faith could be transmitted by proxy was a debated issue in the early church; Augustine held that infant baptism cleansed from original sin and introduced infants to the Church's grace. Baptism at birth became virtually universal in Christendom in the medieval age, signifying both religious salvation and civic status.
This practice combined political and religious dimensions of identity: to be baptized equated to being Christian, and to be Christian equated to being part of Christendom. Baptismal records were even used as markers of citizenship in medieval Europe. Thus, what began as a religious sacrament became an ethnic and national marker?a trajectory that would echo throughout colonial expansion, where European Christians regarded unbaptized peoples as "heathen" and "uncivilized."
d. Islamic and Hindu Examples
Islamic child initiation is through a combination of ritual and spiritual practices that formally include the newborn as a member of the faith and the global Muslim ummah. They include the Adhan (whispered prayer call into the newborn's ear), the Aqiqah sacrificial practice?(sheep or goat sacrifice, giving the child a name, and charitable acts?and, in the case of the male child, circumcision or Khitan). It is also gradually introduced to the recitation of the Quran and general teachings, which define religious identity for life. While every Muslim child ought to be brought into the ummah regardless of race, local cultures syncretise Islam with ethnic or tribal customs to produce different yet variant Islamic identities across Africa, Arabia, and Asia.
Similarly, in Hinduism, the Upanayana ceremony is an official initiation into religious and social life, also referred to as a "sacred thread" or spiritual rebirth for upper-caste men. During the ceremony, the child is initiated with holy mantras, taught by a guru, and inductively incorporated into the varna (class) system, linking religious education to social categorization. Through this ritual, spiritual education and social status are bridged, establishing religious stratification in the child early in life. Theological and ritual purity therefore equated social privilege, an idea that would later inform notions of caste-based and racial divisions in colonial India. Upanayana, as with other initiation rituals, demonstrates how religion is employed simultaneously to form individual spiritual identity and to reinforce boundaries in society.
4. Theological Reflections: Innocence, Identity, and Indoctrination
Theologically, initiation into childhood raises extremely profound questions of will, innocence, and the will of God. Initiation preserves cultural memory yet demands identity before moral agency is exercised. Reinhold Niebuhr cautioned that "sin arises not only from rebellion but from conformity" (The Nature and Destiny of Man 82). Unexamined passing on of faith may therefore strengthen prejudice, exclusivity, and inherited moral ignorance.
Karl Rahner, in his theology of "anonymous Christianity," taught that God's grace is independent of institutional religion. His observation knocks a hole in the assumption that salvation?or spiritual reality?is tied to ceremony or tribe. From this perspective, child initiation, as sacred, risks diminishing the universality of divine grace by conferring spiritual membership as a birthright.
But to define such rituals as a mode of indoctrination would be to disregard their status as anthropology. They provided order, taught morals, and ensured continuity in pre-literate communities. The problem, therefore, is not the initiation ritual per se but its interpretation. When initiation becomes a tool for segregation rather than communion, religion fails to have its redemptive value.
5. Transitional Conclusion
Child initiation is the instant that religion ceases to be abstract and becomes body. It inscribes faith into body, making belief an inheritance. Religion therefore preserves sacred memory and social boundaries through this process. The same ritual that unites a people in the presence of their god also distinguishes them from others, sowing the seeds of tribal and racial consciousness long before adult life.
As the next section will show, the evolution of religious institutions?schools, churches, priesthoods, and temples?continued to legitimize such inherited differences further, making faith ideology and difference doctrine. The early life of the child then becomes the location of collective memory, and, ironically, of human division.
Part IV: Religion, Institutional Power, and the Construction of Racial Ideology
1. From Revelation to Institution
The transformation of religion from private revelation to institutional authority is perhaps the greatest transformation in the history of humankind. What began as humanity's spontaneous encounter with the sacred gradually became more systematized in priesthoods, temples, and creeds. Max Weber called this process the "routinization of charisma"?whereby the religious authority of a prophet or founder is subsequently formalized into bureaucratic structures that store and manage belief (Weber 115).
Institutionalization fulfilled not just a preservative function?preserving holy memory in order to offer doctrinal continuity from generation to generation?but also a control function. It placed authority in a hierarchy of interpreters?the priests, rabbis, imams, and monks who claimed to speak on behalf of the divine. This monopolization of interpretation created dependency: ordinary believers were no longer able to encounter God face to face but only through the institution.
Theologically, this development was justified as divine order. In the Hebrew and Christian traditions, priestly authority was grounded in the idea of sacred election?Levitical descent or apostolic succession?while in Islam, the ulama claimed custodianship of divine law (shari?a). But sociologically, it introduced a new paradigm: religion became not only a spiritual path but a system of governance. Once religion was institutionalized, it was possible to utilize it as an instrument of obedience, specifying morality, conformity, and even status in the name of divine will.
2. Faith and Empire: Religion as a Political Instrument
Leaders across history have employed religion to legitimate their control and keep empires united. The Pharaoh was god and king in old Egypt, the Pope crowned the emperor in medieval Europe, and political control in Islamic caliphates blurred into religious law. These marriages of altar and throne constructed enduring systems of domination where divine grace depended on political obedience.
The Christianization of the Roman Empire by Constantine in the fourth century CE is a good instance of this transformation. Constantine converted an erstwhile persecuted religion into the state religion by adopting Christianity. The cross that was previously a martyrdom symbol became a symbol of conquest. Augustine's City of God tried to justify such an alignment by differentiating the earthly city from the heavenly city, but the line soon dissolved. The church became not just a communion of believers but a governing power with its own lands, laws, and armies.
Similarly, the rise of Islamic empires in the post-seventh century united spiritual mission with political ambition. The Caliph, the Prophet's heir, was both religious and temporal ruler. While early ummah sought to spread monotheism, later dynasties?the Umayyads and Abbasids?employed divine mandate's rhetoric for conquest and taxing infidels. In each case, religion legitimized political desire, making faith an instrument of imperial domination.
3. Doctrines of Difference: Theology and Racial Hierarchy
As religion came to be identified with empire, it came as well to be enmeshed in constructing concepts of race and civilization. The belief that some peoples were blessed by God and others cursed had theological articulation in many traditions. The "Curse of Ham" narrative in Genesis 9, for example, was inappropriately interpreted in medieval Europe and colonial America to justify the enslavement of Africans. While nothing race is expressed in the text itself, what is done to it demonstrates how scripture could be utilized to assist social ideology (Haynes 63).
In Hinduism, the reference to color (varna) in the Rig Veda was the seed of the caste system, where spiritual cleanliness was linked with birth and complexion (Doniger 128). In Islamic civilizations, though the Qur'an did emphasize equality between believers (Qur'an 49:13), later jurists and rulers added racial differences, particularly Arabs vs. non-Arabs, free men vs. slaves.
The European colonial project carried this synthesis of theology and race to its most systematic form. Fifteenth-to-nineteenth-century missionary theology was normally to articulate European domination as a divine mission to "civilize" the heathen. Papal bulls such as Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455) entrusted Christian monarchs with the right to enslave the unconverted and seize their lands. This religious legitimation of exploitation set the ideological grounds for the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonial racism.
Theologically, the teachings reversed the universalism of religion. Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism all proclaim the unity of humankind under a common divine source, but institutionalized religion continuously sacralized difference. Religion, meant to reconcile humankind with God, was turned into an excuse for hierarchy among humans themselves.
4. Religion as a Tool of Social Control
Along with empire and race, religion was also a powerful instrument of psychological control. Its story of sin, salvation, and divine retribution disposed of moral behavior and social stratification. Michel Foucault has referred to this as an exercise in "pastoral power"?a form of government discharged not by brutality but through internalization of discipline (Foucault 214). Through confession, guilt, and obedience, the pious were self-disciplined subjects, their consciences aligned with institutional power.
In medieval Europe, the church's control of knowledge and literacy further entrenched its authority. Theology held sway over education, science, and art. Dissent was not merely heresy, but treason against God's order, punishable by excommunication or death. Similarly, in other societies, clerical elites defended privilege through ritual exclusivity: Brahmins in India, for instance, restricted access to sacred scriptures to maintain social ascendancy. In all three instances, religion became the language of power?upon the hierarchy was taught obedience equalled obedience to God.
Colonization of Africa and America revived these dynamics on a new field. Missionary education, typically associated with colonial rule, reconstituted native religion as superstition and tribal membership as retrogressive. Conversion went hand-in-hand with civilization, while rebellion was branded as rebellion against God's will. As Ngugi wa Thiong'o subsequently pointed out, this was an exercise that "spiritualized colonial subjugation," making conquest appear like salvation (Thiong'o 34). And E. P. Boso stated, "religion- a tool for colonization" (Boso' 25).
And so religion became not only ideology but technology?a way to condition minds, legitimize systems, and maintain order. The church bell, the mosque call to prayer, temple ritual?all regulated time, behavior, and moral imagination, and made religion a tool of control.
5. Theological Reflection: Power and the Loss of Mystery
Theologically speaking, weaponizing religion is a core corruption of its original purpose. Karl Barth warned that whenever religion lies within human frameworks of power, it becomes un-revelatory and is reduced to "unbelief masquerading as faith" (Church Dogmatics I.2, 301). The divine turns into politicized property, and the voice of the divine becomes a human echo of drive.
Reinhold Niebuhr also pointed out that religious organizations have a tendency to consecrate the very injustices which they were meant to question, as group pride blinds groups to their own sin (Niebuhr 189). The irony is that religion, intended to set free, has a tendency to enslave; intended to awaken conscience, it tends to stifle it.
But theology has another reading as well. In Jewish, Christian, and Islamic prophetic traditions, power is repeatedly questioned by the voice of conscience?Moses to Pharaoh, Jesus to Caesar, Muhammad to Quraysh idolatry. The prophets stood not with institutions but against them, with the divine critique of domination. They did not teach control but liberation, not hierarchy but justice.
Rediscovering this prophetic element is central to the recovery of religion from ideology. True faith here is not submission to authority but willingness to truth?a vital experience that transcends tribe, race, and institution.
6. Transitional Conclusion
Institutionalizing religion translated divine encounter into doctrine, and doctrine into law. When faith was joined with empire, it acquired the power to shape races, nations, and destinies. The same texts that bore witness to love and justice came to be interpreted anew to justify slavery, conquest, and social hierarchy. Religion became both sword and shield?weapon of domination as well as shelter of the oppressed.
But with each era of domination, there have been voices that reawakened its intended meaning: liberty, justice, and harmony. The following section will explore this movement of redemption?the attempts in contemporary theology, philosophy, and interfaith dialogue to reabsorb religion's universal spirit and dismantle the divisions it helped establish.
Part V: The Future of Religion ? Reclaiming the Universal Spirit Beyond Race and Tribe
1. Shared Humanity and the Paradox of Division
Human beings breathe the same air, eat the same earth, depend upon the same sun and water, and are bound by the same natural laws. We are born, experience pain, love, and die under the same biological and cosmic circumstances. Modern civilization still more binds us together through shared human-devised mechanisms?education, technology, government, commerce, and medicine. We attend the same schools, shop in the same markets, are treated in the same hospitals, and rely on the same laws of science that apply to medicine, aviation, and communication.
And yet amidst all these profound similarities, humanity remains divided on issues of how to name, define, or deal with the divine. The irony is strong: if we can work together to build airplanes and satellites, why can't we agree on praying? If we look at the same laws of nature in gravity, chemistry, and biology, why must the laws of religion pit people against each other?
This conflict shows us a deep truth about religion?not about God, but human interpretation, as an issue. The divine, by definition, is above discord; man is the one who fragments it into competitive systems of worship, each one demanding sole truth. The crisis in religion, then, is anthropological and not theological. It shows us the boundaries of human ego, culture, and strength when faced with universal mystery.
2. Religion's Role in Human Civilization
Religion has served two roles in human history: it has been an agent of moral order and a force of social estrangement. At its best, religion has given life meaning, ignited compassion, and grounded ethics in purpose that was transcendent. It taught that life is precious, that there was more to reality than the physical, that justice and compassion are the words of the divine.
Historically, religion shaped the foundation of art, law, and society. The Ten Commandments determined Western legal systems; Islamic law built complex ethical economies; Hindu and Buddhist philosophy gave us meditation and mindfulness that inform world psychology today. Religion built hospitals, universities, and charity systems centuries before secular government.
But worst of all, the same religions have been employed as instruments of power, as outlined above. Doctrines meant to unite were reinterpreted to divide. God was weaponized, racialized, and nationalized. Universality of spirit was claimed by tribe and temple. This perversion transformed religion into ideology?a badge of identity to keep others outside God's blessing.
And so, to know the role of religion in human life is to hold such contradictions in tension. Religion is neither necessarily oppressive nor necessarily liberating; it is one or the other depending upon whether it is committed to truth or power. When faith is sought for insight, it uplifts. When faith is sought for control, it consumes.
3. The Ethical Imperative of Shared Existence
The modern world forces us to confront this paradox once more. Globalization has made tribal boundaries permeable: pupils of different faiths learn in the same classrooms, patients of different creeds lie in the same hospital beds, and families of different beliefs eat the same food produced by the same multinational corporations. Science testifies that our genetic difference is infinitesimally small; biology cannot separate "Christian blood" or "Muslim DNA."
Under these conditions, religious division's endurance tells us less about divine difference and more about human insecurity. If we are one planet and one destiny, then religion must shift from being a badge of belonging to a bridge of understanding. The commandment "Love thy neighbor" must be complemented by "Respect thy difference."
This moral imperative is heard across faiths. In Islam, the Qur'an asserts, "We made you nations and tribes that you may know one another, not that you may despise one another" (49:13). In Buddhism, compassion (karu?a) is the supreme virtue. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna states, "The wise see the same divine in all beings." In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus states that love of neighbor is the completion of all law. The universal moral vision is not the property of any single religion but the spirit of all.
4. Towards a Theology of Universal Consciousness
A new theological consciousness is required in order to transcend tribalization of belief?one that affirms diversity without creating division. This is not the destruction of religious identity but its restatement as a language, not a wall. As many tongues express one reality, so many religions can express one truth.
This idea is not recent. The mystical practices of all religions?Sufism in Islam, Kabbalah in Judaism, Christian mysticism, Advaita Vedanta in Hinduism, and Zen in Buddhism?have for centuries claimed the unity of existence. Meister Eckhart wrote, "The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me." Rumi claimed, "The lamps are different, but the Light is the same." Such realities call humanity out of dogma into consciousness?out of belief about God into awakening in God.
In the twenty-first century, this trend has extremely serious ethical and political implications. An universal theology would not eradicate religion but make it humanized?shift it from an identity marker to a shared endeavor of truth, morality, and meaning. Interfaith discussion, secular ethics, and international humanitarian collaboration are nascent indications of this trend.
Religion's future, then, lies not in conquest or conversion but in communion?an openness to the mystery that lies beyond every doctrine and every tribe.
5. Conclusion: Beyond Division, Back to Essence
If mankind eats the same food, drinks the same water, studies in the same schools, works in the same economies, and dies under the same sky, then it is unreasonable that simply the way we worship would be the thing that separates us. God is not the problem?how we have codified God in terms of power, fear, and pride is.
Religion was never meant to divide humanity; it was meant to reveal its oneness in God. If stripped of institutional ego and historical burdens, religion regains its original purpose: to awaken awareness, to cultivate compassion, and to guide civilization toward justice and peace.
The future of religion depends on our capacity to recover this essence. Humankind must move from competition for truth to cooperation in truth. As soon as we realize that all of our philosophies, sciences, and religions are mere languages expressing a single reality?the universal mystery of being?"how we must worship" will finally yield to a higher truth: that we are all expressions of the same divine whole.
Works Cited
Armstrong, Karen. The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism. Ballantine Books, 2001.
Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. Vol. I.2, T&T Clark, 1956.
Doniger, Wendy. The Hindus: An Alternative History. Penguin, 2009.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox, Grove Press, 2004.
Foucault, Michel. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Coll?ge de France, 1977?78. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Haynes, Stephen R. Noah's Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery. Oxford UP, 2002.
Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics. Scribner, 1932.
Rumi. The Essential Rumi. Translated by Coleman Barks, HarperOne, 2004.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Vintage Books, 1979.
Smith, Huston. The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions. HarperOne, 2009.
Thiong'o, Ngugi wa. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Heinemann, 1986.
Eric Paddy Boso. "Last Chains:" From physical slavery to spiritual colonization, Books2Digital, 2025.
Tutu, Desmond. No Future Without Forgiveness. Doubleday, 1999.
Weber, Max. The Sociology of Religion. Beacon Press, 1963.
"If we cannot lay hand on a definite role religion plays in humanity, why then encourage child indoctrination?" Children right to spirituality must be safeguarded!!!
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