Catching up here, just helped me fit another puzzle piece into this whole 'humanity' mess.
Churches act as 'friend or foe' identification systems. For the empowered, it demonizes the 'others' that don't willingly and gratefully take a lesser position in service of their 'hegemony'. For the disenfranchised, it demonizes the more powerful, and provides a union for -some- modicum of protection against them.
In either case there's the carrot and stick. "Please god and he'll protect you from THE OTHER, displease him and you'll be abandoned to fend for yourself against them". What differs seems to be the degree that they do it. The more real the threat from 'the other' the more they focus on 'pleasing god'. The less of a threat 'the others' are, the more the church focuses on fearing the wrath of god or fear of Satan.
So regardless of the words (God is Love Eternal!), no matter which side you're on, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic mess seems to be codified around grooming and controlling membership by indoctrinating them with paranoia and the threat of conditional love from their community being denied them. All so they're too busy scapegoating others and blaming themselves to ask whether their leadership is really concerned about their own wellbeing, or just their own.