Nor is the State over-concerned with the welfare of the individual; it is more concerned with its own power. And one thing the Church has always proclaimed, even through the worst of its errors, is the worth of the individual soul. So without a religion of some kind, who is going to champion the individual?
But what kind of religion? My unhesitating opinion is that it must be a religion that promotes reconciliation. For although it may often be obscene to try to confront the victim of crime with the criminal; one cannot deny it was King Alfred’s moment of deathless glory, when he sought and found reconciliation with his enemies. Most people think the object of war is victory; but unless there is a vision of peace and reconciliation at the end of strife, war leads only to a desert. In the Dark Ages it was perhaps an excusable mistake to make. But there was little enough excuse for the Church, as soon as it got a little power again, to forget its Founder and enforce conformity, by the Inquisition if need be. The Counter-Reformation, which represented a refusal to countenance the Protestant desire for reform, led to the atrocities of the Thirty Years War. Nor did Napoleon, the greatest man of action since Julius Caesar, know any better. He said you could do anything with bayonets except sit on them, so he knew an enforced peace did not last; but he ended his life on St. Helena. And it is a valid criticism of Clausewitz that he never grasped that the true aim of War is peace, not victory.
Most religions have not learned this lesson either. They still tend to think that anyone not of their number should either be excluded from their imaginary heaven, or be compelled to conform. They cannot understand that the mysticism of all religions, the ecstatic union of the soul with Supreme Reality, is expressed in the same language in all religions. There is nothing to choose between any of them! Whereas to avoid another Dark Age, from which we may never emerge, what is required of men and women is right conduct, especially in the leaders. That means surely an inspiration sufficiently adaptable to stand a re-interpretation that accommodates science, the greatest creation of the mind of man, with the deepest yearnings of the human spirit? I may be prejudiced, but I think there is only one religion that is capable of this evolution. The others are not so much false or wrong; as likely to prove unadaptable to change. If so, they will probably allow themselves to be taken down an evolutionary cul-de-sac, due to the ineptitude of their leaders, like the ants and bees and dinosaurs before us. There is nothing to prevent vast swathes of mankind following them.
So who or what is going to save us from that? There are so many dangers to avoid; of being bewitched by the mechanisms of science, of taking refuge in the false certainties of myth and legend, of fighting for a fair share of all the resources until there are no resources left, of allowing hope to degenerate into Political Correctness.