I just started reading, and am only a few pages into, Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer. The author suggests that hope is the most powerful factor in the creation of large scale societal change.

Those who would transform a nation or the world cannot do so by breeding and captaining discontent or by demonstrating the reasonableness and desirability of the intended changes or by coercing people into a new way of life. They must know how to kindle and fan an extravagant hope. It matters not whether it be hope of a heavenly kingdom, of heaven on earth, of plunder and untold riches, of fabulous achievement or world domination.

By implication, hope is the glue that binds like minded people into powerful groups that can initiate, shape and facilitate change. Hope is a tool that can be, and is, used by those in positions of leadership to effect change. The following is an attempt to put together some thoughts about hope and how it relates to religion.

The concept of hope implies there will be a future. Within hope there is also the implication that the future will be better than the present. Each of us has our own version of what will be better in the future. Some see the maintenance of the status quo as leading to a better future. Others seek radical change. To differing degrees, most of us have hopes for the future. We have expectations of good things in the future.

But some people almost exclusively live in their hope for the future and miss the here and now. They put all their energies into what they expect to happen in the future and come to believe that what they hope for is going to become fact. A good example is the Evangelical Christian hope of a better place in heaven. The life focus for Evangelicals is to prepare for the finality of their lives on this planet so that when the so called day of judgement comes they will be raptured up to heaven. They actually believe that this is going to happen and govern their actions to achieve this end. It is a hope that is not based in present reality, nor is it a hope that is based upon empirical evidence. In essence it is hope that has been transformed into belief.

I would like to suggest that atheists, on the other hand, are less inclined to be so obsessed with their hopes. The hopes of atheists are more likely to be grounded in reality, be based on the here and now, and used as a guide in providing general life direction. Atheists are more likely to be independent thinkers and are less likely to derive their identity from membership in a group. The religiously oriented seem to need reinforcement of their beliefs through regular interaction with like minded individuals in group settings such as church services, bible study groups and so on. A great deal of their identity is derived from membership in the group whose members consider themselves as “God’s chosen ones”.

Contrasting the two groups, atheists and evangelicals, it’s easy to see that evangelicals are much more likely to be ripe for manipulation into a powerful societal group. A charismatic leader could create and maintain a movement of like minded people by using their common hope of a better hereafter. And this is just what evangelical preachers do by hanging the threat of eternal damnation over the heads of their congregations. Clinging to their hope of the promised hereafter, the congregation becomes putty in the hands of the skilled manipulator. And when a leader arises that has the ability to bring together the many like minded congregations, a larger powerful group is formed that can effect societal change based upon the leader’s agenda. Thus, by exploiting and harnessing the hopes of millions of believers, Evangelical Christian leaders have maneuvered themselves into positions of power where they have the potential to change society according to the dictates of their belief system.