From an online friend (2/09):

http://www.pathwaysuu.org/sermons/2007/sermon070513.htm

Some excerpts:

“He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8) . . .

Religious bullying involves repeated acts of aggression in which the power of institutional religion is used in unethical ways to achieve fundamentally non-religious ends. This is my definition of it, and I say “repeated acts” because a single act might just be a mistake that the other person regrets and will never do again, or it may simply involve a misunderstanding that gets cleared up. No, religious bullying is persistent in nature, and its expression is not justice and not mercy and has nothing whatsoever to do with walking humbly with your God. It’s contrary to all this, rejects all this, acts out in intentionally malicious ways. Bullying that is verbal, involving name-calling, mocking, hurtful teasing, humiliation, or threats. . .

But now let’s turn to a key question: why? Why does the bullying happen? As my definition suggests, the reasons are fundamentally not about justice, mercy, and walking humbly with one’s God. The reasons have more to do with psychological and social factors. . . What I am suggesting by all this is that psychological and social needs can co-opt and steal religion’s power. On the surface, it looks sounds and smells and tastes like religion, but down deep, where the real problems lie, and therefore the real solutions, something entirely different is going on. Bait and switch. . .

Perhaps the most generic explanation for religious bullying—especially the kind done by adults—has to do with feeling like you have been bullied yourself, and you need to do something to regain a sense of dignity and control. Religious bullies feel bullied themselves: by a society that does not seem to care for the values they care for, by a world that seems to be going to the dogs, going crazy. . .so the religious bullies hit back, and they hit back hard. They use their religion which represents to them stability, tradition, the power of the group—they use it as a weapon, they quote the Golden Rule and they quote the passage from Micah that says “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God” even as they do things that are exactly the opposite. Makes no sense at all. But there it is. Welcome to the human condition.”