James, thank you for sharing about this story. There's been so much cruelty going on that it's hard to keep up with it all.

You asked a really important question - what is it about the religion that elicits cheering and applause over calling people filth, even in the face of the bully death of a child?

I don't think there is a nice, easy answer for that. I think there are a few ingredients though. For some, religion isn't about faith, or how to relate to others, or care, or empathy, or love. It's about following rules and having order in the world. It's about simplistic either/or thinking and a set of beliefs. Either/or makes life easier to deal with. You know who "good" and who is "bad." I have seen professional articles talk about the reality that in any given society that about 1/3 of the people will be beholden to this way of thinking and not have the capacity to move beyond that for any number of reasons. Moving beyond simplistic ways of thinking is often too scary because it means "I don't know" and if I don't know then I don't have a sense of control of the world around me.

For some religion is a means to an end - going back to that idea of control over other people. There's an element of narcissism involved in that. You can add in the addiction to need to be right. What better way to be right than to point that God is on your side and sees the world the way you do.

For some, religion isn't about faith at all. It's about a social identity - a group to identify with because that will offer the person a sense of meaning and purpose. Often these are folks who actually can't define who they are unless they point at who they are not.

For some, religion is an extension of their politics, patriotism, ideology, etc. It's a form of identity from beliefs and a community that holds them. Again, there is usually an us and them related to this. Over the last few decades what I've seen in the US is a replacing of religion as a basis for people's identity with their political allegiance. Both religion and politics offer similar things - an origin story, a clergy, a reason for suffering, identifying evil/and enemy, sacred scriptures/documents, etc.

It doesn't help that the church has been complacent and complicit in all of this. The church rode the wave of popularity in the last century, seeing the culture put it at the center. But the culture doesn't have a use for it anymore. The church got lazy in telling its own story about Jesus and the way of Jesus. The church kept most of the people at simplistic levels rather than deal with complexity and perplexity. The church fell for the sin of control and raking in the money - why rock the boat when the money keeps coming in. But all that is drying up and the church, mostly, has forgotten how to be church and what its foundation is really about. This is why I don't cry about the death of the institution - not that it will all go away. Rather, I'm hopeful, maybe foolishly, that the decline of the church in the US if related to what we Christians claim as a central belief - life, death, and resurrection. The things in our lives (either individually or corporately) that stand in the way of following Jesus need to die off, so that we can experience resurrection/restoration/healing/shalom.

The cheers of supposed Christians over calling someone filth needs to die off. The applause for cruelty needs to die off. And if that means a church dies, then it should. Because if a church/belief system is about cheering on something antithetical to the way of Jesus and who Jesus is about, then it should die off. And there should be no tears for that. It's in the way of following Jesus and his way of moving creation towards shalom - wholeness, completeness, peace, right relationship, justice.