Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
I think the Christian Coalition could be extremely dangerous. We should always be concerned when any group wants to impose their doctrinal concerns on all. To an extent that's what they are trying to do.
As you get larger, it is harder to have focused discussions. Because one of the things I've learned about Congress over the past four years that I've been in is there's no shortage of opinions about how things should be done on any particular subject.
The minute somebody joins a committee... they immediately suffer from committee brain. They become wildly over-enthusiastic, over-optimistic, over-pessimistic. Committees turn people into idiots, and politics is a committee.
No member of any society has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what the society holds to be true.
A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
When like-minded people deliberate as an organized group, the general opinion shifts towards extreme versions of their common beliefs.
People haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.
Group action -- yes; group thinking -- no.
Personal convictions are not politics. Personal convictions, if they become the subject of a group conviction, they become a cult.
Groupthink can become a serious issue - old ideas stay around after they're useful, and new ideas too often don't get a fair hearing.
A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.
