Morality and Religion

It is always interesting to think about the relationship between religion and moral beliefs. For the longest time I have always felt that religion must positively influence the moral decisions that persons make. This could be because my mother’s side of the family is Roman Catholic and I have always been influenced by many of their beliefs and moral behavior. Although when I really started to think about it I realized that even though they are pretty religious their moral values are really no different from my dad’s side of the family which isn’t religious at all. This got me thinking about the relationship between moral beliefs and religion to a greater extent. Thinking back I now wonder why I have always felt that religion and morals are so closely related. I wonder if it is all the movies about the good old days when families were “perfect”. These movies made you think that every family would go to church on Sunday, eat dinner together every night, and never say a bad word to anyone. Hollywood and even many politicians like to make us think that things were better in the 50’s when families were close, the woman stayed at home, and divorces were uncommon. Maybe in some ways things were better back then, but what about all the segregation and racial violence?

I think that religion and morals have very little, if any, relationship at all. I feel that moral values come from society and human kindness. The majority of people simply want to act in a good manner to others because it makes them feel good. There will always be a minority that doesn’t care about being nice to others but this has always been true no matter how prominent religion is at the time. Religious institutes do emphasize good moral behavior, and for this reason whenever religious persons act in a good way others think it is because of their religion. But maybe its just because they’re good people. What about those religious persons that act in a bad manner?

“The prevalence of widespread cheating at a predominantly conservative Christian university would seem to confirm the views of those who believe that religion, far from having a positive influence on personal moral conduct, is more likely to produce hypocrisy than honesty.” (Wolfe 153)

This really got me thinking about this relationship between religious institutions and morality. I can’t seem to come to a conclusion, only a few perspectives. In one way it seems that religion can only help moral beliefs and therefore is good in our society. In another way religion makes many hypocritical or even acts as a way for some to justify wrong doings. So is religion really beneficial to good moral behavior in our society?

Work Cited

Wolfe, Alan. The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith. New York: Free Press, 2003.