Dan Barker on Religion and societal harm
Barker argues from decades of activism that religion causes measurable societal harm through the erosion of church-state separation and the protection of abuse.
Dan Barker, as co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has spent decades documenting and challenging the societal harms caused by religion in the United States. His organisation has filed lawsuits against government endorsement of religion, religious displays on public property, taxpayer funding of religious organisations, and the use of religious exemptions to circumvent civil rights protections.
Barker's catalogue of harms is specific and well-documented: the cover-up of clerical sexual abuse by Catholic and Protestant institutions; the opposition to comprehensive sex education, leading to higher rates of teen pregnancy and STIs in religious communities; the persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals through religiously motivated legislation; and the erosion of science education through the promotion of creationism.
He is careful to distinguish between religion's harms and the goodness of individual believers. Many religious people are kind, generous, and moral — but they are moral despite their theology, not because of it. The problem, Barker argues, is not that religious people are bad but that religious institutions claim an authority that is immune to criticism, and immunity from criticism is a reliable recipe for abuse.
“Religion is the only domain where we give institutions a pass on accountability. And wherever accountability disappears, abuse follows.”