Religion is not, especially in the USA or the western world, an authoritarian model in the manner in which you are suggesting...
Which explains why there are tee-shirts that say "I survived Catholic school", and why some children cower at the thought of confession, and why people every day are sent off to atone for "transgressions" by reciting mantras to iconic figures of Divinity called "Our Father" and "Blessed Mary, magic Virgin...".
Especially Catholicism, but also many Protestant sects in the Western world, have scores of such mechanisms of superiority built into them. Have you not read the horror that grips some people when they even contemplate leaving their religious groupings, be it Muslim, Catholic, Mormon, or some of the fringier bands following one or another embodiment of divinity?
I agree that free, mature Westerners are often outside the reach of these pressures, but they are sometimes corralled by a more insidious form of the same sort of thing in peer pressure and a kind of melded "belief expectation" that permeates discussions and social approvals in all walks of life. The entire struggle to achieve honestly self-elected beliefs in spiritual matters is far more painful and riddled with traps than it ever needs to be.