It is harsh, but the title is the only clever thing about Charles Kimball’s book When Religion Becomes Evil. It is unfortunate, because the subject is too important to be handled so carelessly. There is no doubt in my mind that Kimball sincerely wants to examine and discuss what it is about religion that makes it vulnerable to evil interpretation, but what makes his noble aspiration a failure is his apologetic approach. Kimball, like so many apologists before him, is unable to acknowledge that to really fight back the evil in religion we must declare some religious “truths” invalid. When, for example, Christians say that believing Jesus is the Messiah is the only way for people to make atonement, they would either contradict themselves or act unchristian if they did not try to persuade others to believe in Jesus. Either way, they would rightfully be accused of not taking their own faith seriously.

In order to avoid nasty confrontations with any other religion, Christians must be open to the possibility that they are wrong, that people might actually do quite well without Jesus. But that would be a heretical act for a sincere Christian.

In the book, Charles Kimball lists five—in my view obvious—warning signs of corruption in a religion:

1. Absolute truth claims
2. Blind obedience
3. Establishing the “ideal” time
4. The end justifies any means
5. Declaring holy war

Although I feel that his reflections on each of these five warning signs are superficial, I recognize that they are worth examining. Like Kimball, I think it is important to try to find healthy alternatives to these warning signs. Religion plays in important part in many people’s lives, and that makes its dangers everybody’s concern.

I think it is self-evident that religions make claims of absolute truth. At least this is the case with the mainstream traditions. Religious humanism is a fairly new phenomenon, and to my knowledge only recognized in the Jewish community as a way for Jews to maintain their identity while rejecting the covenant between God and Abraham.

Kimball does not deny that every religion claims to hold the truths about divinity. However, he stresses that there is no need to universalize these claims. A moderate and critical approach to truth is possible.

At first, I thought this seemed like a nice enough idea, but after reflecting on what it meant, I found it illogical. It goes against the whole idea of truth-value. When Christians say that “Jesus is God”, they make an assertion that is either true or false; but when relativists claim that “Jesus is God to some people sometimes”, they only make the observation that people have different opinions about Jesus. Nothing is said about Jesus’s divine status. In other words, this solution to the problem of absolute truth claims is not sound. You cannot give an alternative answer to a questing by replacing the question.

It is easy to agree with Kimball when he warns of selective and uncritical reading of sacred texts. This, I think, is the most common cause for tension. Tiny differences in interpretation have often led to dramatic conflicts within religious societies. The fact that most people read the Bible in translation does not make it easier to agree on what is the one true understanding of a certain paragraph. It is no wonder holy texts are read in so many ways considering the imperfect translations, the time that has passed since the texts were written, and that the cultural context is completely different. Kimball suggests we should be aware when someone demands his or her understanding of a sacred text should be considered an absolute truth. I second that.

This leads us to the next warning sign, which is religious leaders demanding blind obedience from their followers. In the book, Kimball makes an interesting comparison between well-known charismatic leaders to prove his thesis that such leadership can serve both good and evil purposes. The good is represented by the freedom fighters Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King. The bad is represented by the doomsday cult leaders Jim Jones and Shoko Asahara.

Kimball wants to illustrate that charismatic leadership is not a threat in itself, but rather that it becomes evil when it demands blind obedience. Neither Ghandi nor King requested obedience from their followers. On the contrary, they appreciated individual liberty and intellectual freedom. To be free meant to be able to question authority, and that was what their movements were about.

Unlike the sects of Jim Jones and Shoko Asahara, Ghandi and King did not seek solitude and isolation from the wider community. Instead, they sought to be active members of society, which meant that anyone—friend or enemy—was able to scrutinize their work. The teachings and inner life of reclusive sects as Jones’s Peoples Temple and Asahara’s Aum Shinrikyo were unknown to the general public until the day they decided to carry out their destructive plans. To the Peoples Temple, it meant collective suicide; to the Aum Shinrikyo, it meant releasing a toxic nerve agent in the Tokyo Underground.

The differences between the two types of charismatic leadership ought to be obvious to anyone. Had the members of the two destructive sects been encouraged to challenge and question their leaders, the outcome might have been different. And had the outside world been allowed insight, the devastating acts might have been avoided. Kimball is right; the danger is blind obedience, not charismatic leadership.

In a paragraph, Kimball writes that promises of a better tomorrow are fundamental to all the major religions. Our time is incomplete, and various religions offer different explanations to why it is so. Some say we must seek to copy the society of a particular epoch in the past when the world was perfect; others say we have to strive to comply with a divine plan that will make the future perfect. In many religions, worldly imperfection are linked to human behaviour. However, I would argue that utopian visions are dangerous whether they are religious or not. Utopianism is always, in itself, a warning sign.

Marxism is perhaps the most obvious example of a secular ideology that promises a utopian future. And like its religious equivalents, Marxism says that human nature is the major obstacle. Where Christianity blames sexual desires and secularism, Marxism blames greed, selfishness, and entrepreneurship. The world would be perfect had only humans been less human.

Kimball discusses a few examples of dangerous utopianism in his book. To a reader with some knowledge of current affairs and religion, his examples are predictable. It is the Jewish extremists who wanted to rid the Temple Mount in Jerusalem of the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock; it is the al-Qaeda hijackers who crashed aeroplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001; and it is the conservative Christians in America who want to rid the state of secular influence. All of these groups act on the idea that the ideal time will materialize if only they destroy certain obstacles.

Kimball offers democracy as a healthy alternative to this narrow-minded fundamentalism. I am not sure this is a sufficient answer to the problem since most people with these convictions tend to regard worldly law as subordinate to divine law. Democracy may be an answer in matters not covered by the Holy Scriptures, but I think it is naïve to think that Christian extremists in America (or any other extremists) will ever accept the majority decision on something as sensitive and controversial as free abortion.

When I read the chapter about this warning sign, I could not stop thinking about Immanuel Kant. One of the truly agreeable parts of his moral philosophy is the so-called Second Formulation of the Categorical Imperative, which states that human beings “must be treated never as a mere means but as the supreme limiting condition in the use of all means, i.e., as an end at the same time.” (From Lewis White Beck’s translation of Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals.)

Like Kant, Kimball rejects the idea that any measures are allowed to realize a goal. He exemplifies his position through a number of historic events, such as the rampage violence between Muslims and Hindus in India and the mass killing of Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein. These examples show the danger posed by religion when it makes a single component unimpeachable.

The middle way Kimball presents is, again, quite naïve. I think anyone agrees that all belief systems must be liberal enough to allow change over time, but considering that even small changes often result in communities splitting, I have more faith in the increasing marginalization Kimball writes about in the end chapter. Even if the extremists of today will disappear, new generations will find the same ideas and make them theirs. The best we can hope for is that the number of people attracted by extremist interpretations will decrease.

It goes without saying that it is a warning sign of religion going astray when people begin to declare holy war. I do not think I am the only one who finds Osama bin Laden’s holy-war rhetoric amusingly old-fashioned. Yet, it was not long ago warrior kings of Europe fought each other in the name of God. Something every smug westerner ought to think about when Islamist organizations like al-Qaeda and Hamas communicate with us. To some of them, the Christian Crusade is not a closed chapter.

Kimball seeks a healthy alternative in the peaceful objectives of all religions. There could be an end to holy wars if only the bellicose extremists were overthrown by the peaceful mainstream. Wishful thinking perhaps, but to have faith in humanity is our best option.

Religions may host the potential to be both good and evil. What side prevails is up to the people. I said earlier that Kimball was naïve when he wrote about democracy. I think he is. However, it is humankind that decides what role religion will play in the world. I am too cynical to believe in Kimball’s ideas about unity and people working for a common good. Nevertheless, I do recognize that in order to refute evil, we must have faith in humans.