When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs by Charles Kimball

Reviewed by Renee Pistone (CLA 2010)

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The Crusades, the Inquisition, even September 11, 2001, all conjure images of Fundamentalist ideologies of religion gone bad. In When Religion Becomes Evil Author Charles Kimball explains the religious and socio-political reasons for why these Events occurred. For Kimball, they are the essence of hatred and evil potentially justified by religion. Kimball's thesis is an interesting critique about the process of how religion can be distorted.

The main thrust of the work centers around a meticulous explanation of the five warning signs that lead to corrupt religious behaviors. The warning signs include: claims that specific religions have the Absolute Truth, stiffening obedience to a figurehead, the establishment of a special time for followers to act, the Machiavellian ends justifies the means attitudes, and the concept of a holy war.

In conclusion, each chapter focuses on examples of crimes committed in the name of religion. From the Crusades to Jim Jones, almost nothing is left out. Kimball maintains that corrupt religious practices are responsible for these horrors. However, the author contends that the core foundations of the religions are peace loving, and that they are the potentially radical adherents who corrupt these core foundations, making use of them for distinctly evil purposes and objectives. In terms of the audience, readers may need a bit of background information about these religions, in order to critically respond to his thesis but this book may still prove useful to theology and religious history students alike because of its strong chronology of the horrific events it describes.