The Tragic Business Model of Monotheism

An obscure evangelical pastor threatened to burn some sacred texts, capturing the attention of the world. Will angry mobs thousands of miles away murder the innocent to revenge the insult?

Israelis and Palestinians fight to the death over a tiny patch of land. Can they make peace before Iran unleashes nuclear Armageddon?

Iraqi Sunni and Shiite factions blow each other up daily. Will they ever settle into an uneasy truce as Catholics and Protestants did after hundreds of years of killing each other in Ireland, and before that across Europe?

What is wrong with this picture?

For a movement sharing a common heritage claiming peace and love, monotheism seems to do a remarkable job stirring up hatred.

What is it about the business models of these institutions that foment such torrents of violence? What other large scale human endeavor, besides the nation-state, has so much blood on its hands? And not just lately. This has been going on for thousands of years.

Viewing organized religions through the lens of its business models challenges many people's sensibilities. It seems so blasphemous that the mind snaps shut. This is an important component of the business model. Few businesses have hit upon such effective formulas to avoid examination.

Despite the predictable outcry, let's give it a try.

Organized religions have senior management teams (pontiffs, cardinals, bishops, ayatollahs) and employees (priests, pastors, nuns, mullahs, imams, rabbis, cantors, mohels) that work together, often through an organized chain of command. These employees collect a steady stream of revenue from customers, otherwise known as parishioners. In return they provide both individual and community services, some real and some spiritual. Cash arrives in the form of dues, tithes or fees amply supplemented by donations.

Organized religions have an independent corporate existence that persists beyond the lifetime of any individual. These corporations own property, sometimes a lot of property accumulated over the ages. Local branches adapt their methods and messages to meet market needs, yet only a certain amount of innovation is permitted before national or global governance bodies threaten to revoke their charter. Some locals are independently owned and operated while others function as franchises.

Except for the fact that senior management answers to an invisible being rather than to a board of directors, organized religion look a lot like many multi-national corporations. Like businesses, religions often try to steal each other's customers. Yet religions are unique in that the customers of most businesses don't have a history of running around killing the customers of rival businesses.

Prior to the invention of monotheism religious and civil life was enriched with a panoply of deities that had varying powers and mixed characters, often reflecting the foibles of human nature. Gods and goddesses were handsome and beautiful, though none claimed perfection. They cavorted through a pastiche of orally transmitted stories with no single text representing divine truth. Beautiful temples were built, festivals dotted the calendar, wine and music brought neighbors together, and guilt-free carnal love was celebrated in all its forms. Neighboring and successive cultures swapped and adopted each other's gods, an easy process since there was always room for one more.

Then out of the desert arose a jealous, vengeful god claiming omniscience and omnipotence. This god brooked no rivals, demanding that followers give unquestioned obedience even unto killing their own sons if asked for proof of piety. The world has never been the same since.

A holy book emerged then accreted another, then mutated in a process that continues to this day. Every new variant claims to represent the one and only divine truth. Faction bred faction, each denouncing all others as apostates and infidels. Sex went from being celebrated to being demonized, women were subjugated to a rigid patriarchy, and homosexuality was transformed from an open and accepted part of life into a despicable crime. Goddesses were abolished, save one lesser goddess that was made a virgin. Animal sacrifice was replaced by symbolic human sacrifice, celebrated weekly through a shared sacrament of ritual cannibalism.

The familiar sounds strange when described this way, doesn't it? This is another key to understanding how the business model works. People can become accustomed to anything if they are raised to believe from the time they are children.

While polytheism perished and ancient temples turned to ruins, monotheism thrived amongst the detritus. How did this happen?

One brilliant innovation was learning to prosper through misery by promising a better life after this one while threatening eternal torture for those who refused to obey. Another was to declare a wide range of normal human emotions and behaviors sinful, empowering clerics to offer recurring absolution for a price. Compounded over the centuries this made the Church the wealthiest corporation on earth, giving it the means to commission countless works of propaganda embedded in art, architecture, and music. But the most potent technique for controlling men's minds was to declare war on reason, turning away from the path blazed by ancient Greek philosophers and substituting blind faith as the foundation of truth. Questioning this faith was the worst of all sins.

Simple though this sounds, this business model suborned all civil institutions, contributing to a thousand years of darkness. It took the Age of Enlightenment followed by the American Revolution to finally cleave church from state. This return to reason has yet to transform the most virulent brand of medieval monotheism, Islam. Spread by the sword it still possesses the minds of men from Africa to the Middle East and beyond, impoverishing their lives and threatening ours.

Unprecedented material prosperity bloomed in those parts of the world that freed the mind from the worst excesses of this tragic business model. It remains to be seen whether the last 200 years of western civilization can provide a lasting formula for the future or whether mankind will revert to its tribal roots.