Evil never advances better than when it “gets religion.” When it claims to “have the blessing of God” upon it, evil can justify whatever it says and does. Evil is never more insidious and dangerous than when it operates through a politician/priest collusion.

Israel was farthest away from God during the times when monarchs and ministers conspired to create a top-to-bottom system of oppression (e.g. Jeremiah 6:13-15). In Jesus’ day, evil religion was personified in the Pilate/Herod partnership that desecrated both synagogue and society, turning the Temple itself into a “den of thieves.”

After the close of the biblical era, history continued to document the advance of evil through political/religious deception. [1] The one-word summary for this is imperialism. [2] Today, we describe the advance of religious evil in the word nationalism. [3] Across two millennia, religious evil has produced what Dorothy Day called “the dirty rotten system.”

Religious evil…