Joe,

Good point. The Catholic Church is probably as monolithic as it gets, which is still only "monolithic." However, I mentioned it because it seemed to be the model that Mark had in mind.

Rereading my post I noticed that I neglected to state my basic point clearly. (Assuming that I had a point when I wrote it.) I tend to look at religions as symptoms rather than causes. Studying scriptures and the theologizing about them will tell you a lot about justifications for behavior but not much about its causes.