I think it's safe to say that religion is one way that people join together in community to share their most precious values and ideals and beliefs. If anger and fear, particularly xenophobic fear, is a dominant force in their lives - then their religion will serve to amplify that anger and fear into something horrible. If the dominant forces in their lives are justice and generosity and love, then their religion may serve to amplify those forces. When there is a conflict between the forces of love and fear within a religious group, then the results will be mixed.
But the currently fashionable practice of condemning all religion as inherently bad, is downright prejudice.
Tell me what was wrong with Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Community, with Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, with Desmond Tutu and his work as an Anglican archbishop in South Africa.
-Joe-