I am not going to downplay the role religion has played in the fight for rights. I know that Martin Luther King Jr. used religion as a platform for his peaceful protests. Louis Farakhan organized the Million Man March on the Muslim platform. There are many more movements of a similar nature that happened prior to both these events and after them, that were made possible by religion.
What I am stressing in this piece, however, is the reason why religion has helped oppression and prevented the exact same events mentioned above from becoming commonplace, especially when they are most needed.
Let's focus first on the quoted statement by John Lennon. What he says here is very true, and we have witnessed instances when the power within a people was awakened and they decided enough was enough, then took to the streets and toppled regimes few would have thought could be unseated.
It's not a coincidence that all of the salient instances of people realizing the power they have were secular in nature, even when fervent believers were among them, even when they would end up as leaders, if not THE leaders in the new dawn.
It will always be the case that awakening the power required to move the masses to revolution will remain a "so near yet so far" situation where the masses are insufficiently freed from doctrines that create a stoical, apathetic and conformist mindset, chief of which is religious doctrine.
Once taken up by a critical number in society, religion is for me the biggest obstacle to making people realize they are not powerless, and it is in relation to this that some have referred to organized religion as "the opium of the people".
There is no worldview that induces a mindset that doesn't panic at the experience or prospect of the irreversible worsening of a situation or state than the religious. This is an unnatural and induced mindset that can only be understood or seen when scripture's effect on the psyche is carefully analyzed.
You need to get into a bit of that Freudian stuff for this.
People are designed to realize that it's too late when milk has been spilt. This mindset is functional for survival. It enables people to prevent a situation from reaching a point of no return by making them realize that changes and states, though transient, can become irreversible without intervention, prompting the requirement for timely reaction to a perceived change that carries the prospect of turning into a threat to their survival/well-being.
And it is precisely this realism that religion destroys in people.
The whole premise of religious thought is founded upon the idea things will be reconciled, reversed, corrected, "in the end". Changes for the worst, degeneration, ruin, wreckage, economic impoverishment, etc., will all be corrected "in the end". Religion thus inculcates the mindset that there is never need for panic or worry. God will make everything as it was "in the end". Prices of essentials will fall, "in the end".
Think of this as something similar to getting people caught up (brainwashed) in a mindset that believes only voting brings change. The possibility that presidents may actually not be the people controlling countries will be obscured from view because the people are distracted by the vicious circle they are caught up in that believes change and restoration only happens after elections, after the right candidate has won.
For fervent believers of especially Abrahamic faiths, it doesn't matter in their minds that the distant end that's foretold in scripture will not be lived in their current flesh and bone form, making their current realm, including all of its trials and tribulations, irrelevant. That the illusion things will inevitably be as they are supposed to be (as they were before they took a downward tumble) is just comfort for a form of life that will not be lived in the end is not a big deal to Christians and Muslims is telling enough of their potential to want to fight for their rights in this realm.
What's worse is religious doctrine guarantees this afterlife, this end, to be a next day event for every successive generation that lives centuries and millenia later, so that each believer believes judgment day is theirs to live through. Jesus' return is expected to happen in their lifetime here on earth while they are still flesh and bone rather than spirit after their death.
Every religious generation that has lived before believed that Christ will return in future, but the intimated and subconscious belief was that this would actually happen before their lives were done. To this end, doomsday prophecies play a vital role.
With such a worldview among a significant percentage of the population, is it any surprise that rogue regimes abuse the rights of as many people as they do, to the extents that they do? Is it surprising that they can wreak as much irreversible carnage?
All it takes is a critical number in society to be shackled to the religious worldview and voila! Paradise for all manner of despots and other miscreants in leadership roles looking to profit off of self immolation and suffering.
If you follow the logic above, then you will see why it is imperative to rescue people from religion first (and also from thought influenced by doctrine that works the same way on their psyches) then, and only then, can you stand a good chance of awakening the power in them.
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