The longevity of religious texts through the centuries is due in no small part to their poignant and often poetic lessons on morality. Unfortunately, many people assume morality comes from religion, or at the very least, that religion played a central role in its advancement. The uncomfortable truth is that morality exists largely in spite of religion, not because of it.

The world’s most popular religions, namely those derived from Abrahamic belief systems, have long claimed that morality originates from Holy Scripture. The evolution of social structures and civilizations tell a different story. Morality was essential to that social evolution. Without the social order conferred by morality, complex societies could not have developed beyond basic familial and tribal unions.

In his book, A Natural History of Human Morality, Michael Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig Germany, presents some 30 years of research on the evolution of human moral psychology. This research helps explain how modern humans evolved far beyond other species in our cognitive ability to collaborate, thus improving our collective chances of survival.

Tomasello’s experiments led to conclusions about how the human struggle for survival compelled the development of ultra-collaborative skills rooted in a collective understanding of trust, respect, and responsibility. These skill sets, in turn, resulted in objective norms of right and wrong.

The development of more advanced skills like shared intentionality began governing individual human interactions as well as interactions with the community as a whole – what we call morality. The essential elements of morality can be traced to even the earliest civilizations and clearly played a pivotal role in societal evolution.

Our future as a species has always depended on ultra-cooperation, and when that cooperation begins to falter, the collapse of social order is not far behind. This effect is exacerbated as humanity develops more powerful weapons of mass destruction that become available to an ever-growing number of countries and competing groups within those countries.

This is the situation we find ourselves in today, and not just with the risk of escalating global confrontation. Ultra-cooperation is also essential to the success of any global initiative intended to address the climate crisis and slow the rate of rising temperatures and its devastating impact on the habitability of our planet.

The fact is that morality has always been defined by those in power. In the west, white Christian men predictably held the power and were either directly or indirectly supported by the Church. When conquest, genocide, slavery, and segregation were deemed necessary to acquire new lands and resources and to establish new trade routes, those actions were sanctioned by the Church. It was much easier to carry out these tasks knowing that God had ordained them.

Well before the Reformation and the establishment of protestant churches, the Catholic church set the stage for dehumanizing people of color to justify conquest and colonization. Its subjugation of women, of course, dated back to the Old Testament and to this day women are denied any positions of authority in the church.

By the 1400s, the Catholic church became the first global organization to justify the trans-Atlantic slave trade and authorize the permanent enslavement of Africans and indigenous peoples. As Europe competed for natural resources and slave labor, it fueled the race for global colonization and mass exploitation of indigenous lands.

Through the 1800s, the church continued to give clear conscience to those who practiced slavery and committed genocide against indigenous peoples, including in North America. Most of the world divested themselves from the slave trade well before America, which was one of the last – and then only after a Civil War.

While some churches rebelled against traditional doctrine and joined the abolitionist movement, the majority of Southern white churches in America fought to maintain slavery as one of the pillars of the Confederacy. Theological arguments were used to actively endorse slavery, segregation, and voting restrictions that Black Americans are still fighting against today.

After the Civil War, those southern churches vigorously opposed reconstruction. They continued to assure white Southerners of their God-given superiority over Black Americans, free or not. From the Ku Klux Klan to the enshrinement of Jim Crow laws to their opposition to the Civil Rights Movement, white churches continued to provide the biblical justification for segregation and dehumanization of Black communities.

We still see it today. When conservatives needed to spur their Christian base to the polls, they declared war on ‘woke mobs’ and all those trying to give equitable representation to African American lives in history and social contexts. History is being systematically whitewashed to court white Christian voters whose faith is still deeply rooted in white supremacy.

Conservatives of course didn’t stop there. They declared trans kids an abomination and L.G.B.T.Q. identities a threat to God’s creation. Red states criminalized gender-affirming health care, casting parents and doctors as child abusers, groomers, and pedophiles.

It’s safe to say that up to this point in human history, organized religion has contributed more to sowing division than it has in fostering cooperation. Thankfully, not all churches operate this way.

Some churches practice their faith in a way that lifts everyone up, and not through a million-dollar sound system that would put Vegas to shame. I’m talking about congregations who will literally and figuratively pick you up if you falter. I’m talking about churches that put themselves on the line for social justice, and have been blown up, shot at, and burned down, but never stay down.

These churches personify a God that you’d actually want to hang out with, not out of fear or obligatory worship, but because they lift you up when you need it. This isn’t some God that keeps score and more closely resembles a petty, vain, insecure frat boy. There’s no talk of a rich man’s version of heaven or a poor man’s version of hell.

This God doesn’t condemn someone because they were born a certain color, or for who they love, or for being trapped in the wrong gender. This God is nothing like the Gods whose sole purpose seems to be maximizing baby production, like some night shift manager in an illegal industrialized breeding facility. No, this God joins in the singing and clapping because singing and clapping is good for the soul – and not even a million-dollar sound system can hold a candle to the music reverberating off the walls in these churches.

The Black Freedom Movement would not have been successful without Black churches leading the way for social justice. Where would we be if Black Americans had not organized, marched, and protested in spite of deadly bombings, the assassination of their leaders, and daily violence against their families.

The path to ending the weaponization of religion and dismantling systems of injustice cannot be accomplished without those same Black churches. It was their steadfast commitment to social justice that set them apart back then and it sets them apart today.

Dr King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, were both social justice warriors, and their vision of the Beloved Community is the epitome of a world where ultra-cooperation and inclusivity are the cornerstones of society. These communities would exist in a World House where, as Dr King envisioned, “Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation.” After Martin’s assassination, Coretta founded the King Institute for Nonviolent Social Change to be a global resource for those pursuing this vision.

The re-branded Republican Party however, with its Christian nationalist ideology, is entirely antithetical to King’s vision. Through its Project 2025, conservatives plan to criminalize social justice and punish any organization that pursues it.

In this respect, not much has changed since F.B.I. Director J Edgar Hoover set out to neutralize Dr King. Hoover held a personal vendetta against King for his pursuit of social justice and his leading role in the Civil Rights movement. He put a target on King’s back by labeling him a communist and subversive, even naming King as the number one threat to the American way of life.

King wanted to hold America accountable for its hypocrisy, not only in its institutionalized racism but in its abuse and weaponization of religion. In a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta around the Fourth of July 1965, King spoke again of his dream. He harkens back to the Declaration of Independence, and the dream that the world will one day embrace the true meaning of those transformative words, all men are created equal.

“The first saying we notice in this dream,” King says, “is an amazing universalism.” He goes on to point out that the word all, includes Black men, Gentiles, Jews, Protestants, Catholics, humanists and agnostics.

Morality is not a religious construct, nor does it require religious doctrine or faith to endure. It is time to stop attributing moral superiority to organized religion, in particular the Catholic and white Evangelical churches that still sanction oppression. In addition, we must ensure that organized religion is held to the same standards of logic and reason, the same rules of law, as every other institution in this country.

It may seem impossible, but as we learned from Rosa Parks, it starts by saying, ‘Nah.’

Peter Tchoryk

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