Religion: From Followers to Fans

 

Religions today are in crisis—not because their founders failed, but because their followers often chose the easier path of admiration over the harder path of transformation. What we see across the world is that religious communities have become fan clubs. Christians gather as admirers of Jesus Christ, Muslims as admirers of Muhammad, Buddhists as admirers of the Buddha, and so on. Yet admiration is not the same as discipleship. Reverence for a person is not the same as living out their vision.

The founders of the great religions spoke with clarity and power. They called people to honesty, humility, justice, and compassion. They disturbed the comfortable, challenged the powerful, and demanded integrity of heart. These are not easy teachings to follow. They require courage, sacrifice, and inner change. That is precisely why so many have quietly replaced those teachings with something easier: loyalty to the founder. It is far simpler to sing praises, defend a name, or wear a symbol than it is to forgive an enemy or care for the outcast.

This substitution is not harmless. Once religion becomes about identity rather than truth, it turns into fanaticism. People cling to their founders as tribal banners. They defend dogmas more fiercely than they practice virtues. They fight to prove their loyalty, while neglecting the very wisdom their founder gave them. The irony is bitter: religions built on love and peace often produce hostility and division—not because of their founders, but because of their fans.

If religion is to have any future worth defending, it must return to its roots. The question every believer must face is simple yet unsettling: Am I a fan of my founder, or a follower of their teaching? The first offers comfort, pride, and group identity. The second demands humility, self-examination, and change. The world does not need more fans of Jesus, Muhammad, or the Buddha. It needs true disciples—people who embody compassion, justice, and truth in daily life.

Religions were never meant to be monuments to personalities. They were meant to be living movements of transformation. To recover that vision, believers must stop worshiping their founders as idols and start walking the path those founders showed. Only then will religion regain its soul and become again what it was meant to be: not a badge of belonging, but a way of becoming.