In God’s Name

How religion has been used to control — and how silence protects power, not the faithful.

“When faith becomes untouchable, power becomes unaccountable. And silence becomes complicity.”

Prologue: In the Name of God

There’s something about the silence of a cathedral that gets under your skin.

The echo of footsteps on stone. The candlelight trembling in a side chapel. The smell — old dust, incense, and a memory you can’t quite place.

For some, these are signs of holiness. For me, they are echoes of history. Structures that must be preserved for future generations. Historical artefacts.

But there’s also something else: power dressed as humility. Shame disguised as virtue. Silence that has hidden too many secrets for too long.

This is not a comfortable piece to write. But it feels necessary because of recent events.

Why I’m Writing This

Because I’ve lived long enough — and read deeply enough — to see that the atrocities committed in the name of religion are not unfortunate one-offs. They are part of a long, deeply embedded pattern.

As someone with a lifelong interest in history, I’ve spent years exploring how power operates — how it clothes itself in robes, rituals, and righteousness. Again and again, religion has been used not just as a guide to the divine, but as a tool of control. Not just to comfort the suffering, but to enforce silence. Not just to uplift the poor, but to keep them in their place.

From the Crusades to the Inquisition, from burnings at the stake to the Magdalene Laundries, from the mass graves of infants to the quiet scandal of cover-ups and abuse, we see a legacy not of mercy — but of manipulation.

That’s why I’m writing this.

Not to sneer at faith. Not to mock belief. But to challenge the idea that religion, simply by virtue of being sacred, should be immune from scrutiny. Especially when it continues to cause harm — in the very places where it claims to offer healing.

This article focuses on Christianity — the tradition I was raised in, and the institutions closest to home. Other religions have their own stories and struggles, but that is not my battle to fight.

It says something, doesn’t it — that in 2025, I feel nervous publishing this? I’m not calling for violence. I’m not mocking faith. I’m simply asking institutions of belief to be held to the same moral standards they demand from others. And yet, part of me wonders: is that still allowed? If that’s not reason enough to write this, I don’t know what is.

Sacred Spaces, Human Hands

I’ve visited some of the world’s great churches: Sagrada Família, St Paul’s, Canterbury, Notre-Dame, Sacré-Cœur, Westminster Abbey, York Minster, and St Peter’s in Rome.

And I’ll admit it — I’m moved by them. Not spiritually, perhaps, but emotionally. The scale, the design, the ambition of it all — it’s extraordinary. To think of the lives that went into shaping these spaces, the skill and sacrifice. I feel awe. I feel respect.

But not belief.

To me, these are human creations, not divine ones. They’re artefacts — magnificent relics of history and devotion. When I hear sermons inside them, I don’t feel the presence of God. I feel the weight of performance — words that promise comfort, but to me sound like false hope in the face of life’s brutal truths.

If others find peace in that, I don’t begrudge them. But for me, it feels like fantasy — poetry layered over pain.

A Welsh Childhood, a Vatican Shock

I was brought up in a Welsh mining village. Like many children of my generation, I was forced to go to chapel — a nonconformist one, where people spoke in tongues and clutched their Bibles like lifelines. I didn’t understand the words. I just knew I was meant to be afraid. Of hell. Of sin. Of myself.

It scared me. Enough, probably, to put me off religion for life.

Years later, I visited the Vatican. I marvelled at the grandeur — the vast halls, the Renaissance art, the gold-encrusted ceilings. And then I walked outside and saw old women begging on the steps. The contradiction was staggering. The riches of God’s chosen stewards towering above the desperation of the poor.

It said more than any sermon ever could.

Ireland: When Mercy Turned to Misery

For decades, women who became pregnant outside of marriage were cast out as “fallen.” They were sent to Magdalene Laundries and mother and baby homes, run by Catholic orders and backed by the Irish State. These weren’t sanctuaries. They were institutions of shame. Women worked without pay. Babies were taken. Records were falsified. Names were erased.

In 2014, local historian Catherine Corless uncovered death records for 796 infants and children who had died at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, between 1925 and 1961. Crucially, no burial records existed for them. Corless discovered that the children’s remains had been buried in a disused underground sewage chamber.

Now, in July 2025, a full forensic excavation is finally underway. Experts are carefully recovering the commingled remains — some no larger than tiny bones in cloth — with the hope of identifying the children through DNA and giving them a dignified burial. The work is expected to last up to two years.

This is not ancient history. This is our present, unearthing the sins of the not-so-distant past — one fragile bone at a time.

Where was the mercy? Where was the compassion? Where was the Church?

And Here in North Wales

But this isn’t just about Ireland. Or Catholicism. Or the distant past.

In Bangor, our own cathedral has faced scandal — allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour, excessive drinking, and clergy conduct entirely at odds with their sacred responsibilities.

These aren’t just lapses in judgment. They are part of a larger pattern: institutions protecting themselves, not the people they claim to serve.

Welby Resigns: The Church of England’s Reckoning

In November 2024, Archbishop Justin Welby resigned after an independent review found he had failed to act on long-standing allegations against John Smyth, an influential figure within evangelical circles who abused more than 100 boys.

Welby admitted to “serious institutional failures.” Survivors had spent years unheard. The Church had prioritised reputation over truth.

His interim successor, Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, has also faced criticism for past safeguarding failures. In early 2025, the Church of England rejected proposals to move safeguarding to an independent authority — reinforcing the perception that institutional protection still takes precedence.

A Long History of Sanctified Power

But hasn’t it always been like this?

The medieval Church was swollen with corruption. Indulgences sold to the rich. Bishops in palaces. Popes who fathered children and led armies. While peasants were told to be meek, silent, and grateful.

Those who questioned the Church were branded heretics. Tortured. Burned. Erased.

Religion, for all its hymns and halos, became a mechanism of domination.

The Philosopher’s View

Nietzsche saw it. “God is dead,” he wrote — not in celebration, but in warning. Religion had lost its soul. It no longer inspired; it imprisoned.

Marx called religion “the opium of the people” — a sedative for suffering, a tool for compliance.

Freud called it an illusion — a wish-fulfilment fantasy, born of fear.

None of them dismissed the human need for meaning. They challenged the ways religion had twisted that need into submission.

In more recent years, Richard Dawkins called religion “the root of all evil” — not because of belief itself, but for how it exempts itself from reason, fosters tribalism, and implants fear in children. “Faith can be very, very dangerous,” he wrote, “and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong.”

Christopher Hitchens went further: “Religion poisons everything.” He accused it of enabling cruelty, repression, and hypocrisy while cloaking itself in moral certainty.

I don’t share their tone in full — nor do I dismiss the good that faith can inspire. I respect the intent behind their arguments: to confront hypocrisy, defend the vulnerable, and challenge power. But I also recognise that faith, for many, is a source of comfort and community. Still, when you’ve seen harm done in the name of sanctity, when you’ve watched institutions preserve themselves at the cost of human suffering, it’s hard not to feel that same fire. Even if you temper it with sorrow. Even if you temper it with sorrow.

But Let’s Be Fair

Religion has also inspired immense good. Throughout history, churches and faith-based groups have built schools, hospitals, and shelters. They’ve cared for the sick, fed the hungry, comforted the dying, and fought for justice — from civil rights movements to anti-slavery campaigns.

There have always been individuals whose faith led them not to dominate, but to serve — people like William Wilberforce, who fought to abolish the slave trade in Britain; Martin Luther King Jr., whose sermons moved nations and whose dream of equality was rooted in Christian ideals; and Desmond Tutu, who called apartheid a sin and forgiveness a form of resistance. Their religion wasn’t a shield for power, but a call to humility and justice.

Many believers I’ve known personally have lived humbly, served quietly, and acted with compassion — not because they sought reward, but because they felt called to love their neighbour. That deserves respect.

And some religious institutions today are trying to reckon with past failures. There are clerics, laypeople, and reformers who are pushing for transparency, accountability, and change from within — and that, too, deserves acknowledgement.

But that’s exactly why the betrayals matter so much. Because when an institution built on trust protects the abuser, not the abused, it does more than fail — it desecrates its own message. Because the gap between what religion says and what it does can be vast. And when that gap is cloaked in silence, it becomes not just hypocrisy — but harm.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

I don’t believe in God. But I do believe in truth. In conscience. In the human capacity to choose good — not out of fear of hell, but out of love, reason, and responsibility.

If there’s redemption, it begins with honesty.

The Church cannot preach light while burying bodies. It cannot offer salvation while clinging to power.

Maybe Nietzsche was right. Maybe the end of institutional religion isn’t the death of meaning — but the start of something freer, more honest, more human.

Afterword: On Speaking, and Listening

I didn’t write this to offend. I wrote it because I’ve always been fascinated by the power of religion. I was brought up to obey, but I couldn’t embrace it. I couldn’t be ‘saved’ as many people claim to have been.

I’ve tried to understand why people believe. I’ve had many conversations, asked thoughtful questions, listened carefully. But more often than not, those discussions end with a version of the same phrase: “You just have to believe.” It’s not an answer, not in the rational sense — it’s a leap. I don’t fault anyone for making it, but I’ve never been able to. For me, belief without evidence isn’t comforting; it’s unsettling.

Also, silence, too often, has protected the powerful and abandoned the vulnerable.

If you are a person of faith, and you’ve read this far, thank you. You may disagree with much of what I’ve said — but I hope you recognise the spirit in which it’s offered: not hatred, not superiority, but a deep desire for honesty, for accountability, and for justice.

Because surely the point of any belief system — religious or not — is to bring us closer to truth, not further from it. And truth can’t flourish in shadow.

Faith, if it is to mean anything, must be strong enough to withstand scrutiny. And those who claim moral authority must be willing to answer for how they’ve used it.

I still walk into churches. I still sit in their silence because it’s a meditative space. But I don’t listen for the voice of God — but for the echoes of those who were never heard.

Sources

• Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006)

• Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything(2007)

• Makin Review on John Smyth and Welby’s resignation (AP, Reuters, Church of England press release)

• Tuam excavation (2025), Catherine Corless investigation (The Guardian, FT, The Times)

• General Synod decision on safeguarding (The Guardian, BBC)

• Commentary on Bangor Cathedral scandals (regional news archives)

• Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud texts (public domain and secondary sources)