Why Tanner Writes on Religion? Does He Care What You'll Think?
Religion keeps shaping lives, laws, and identities long after people stop questioning its origins
Today I will write about something personal: why I chose to explore the triangle of religion, history, and politics. If the title feels a bit Poirot-like, reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s famous detective who refers to himself in the third person, apologies.
I didn’t wake up one day and decide to annoy believers for fun. I didn’t lose a bet and get stuck writing about ancient gods, dead prophets, church councils, or why people still argue over books written by people who thought the sky was a dome. I write about religion and its history because religion never stays politely in the past. It keeps showing up. In laws. In culture. In family trauma. In wars. In guilt. In identity. In how people see themselves and how they treat others.
And because most people were taught a version of religious history that is clean, heroic, simplified, and deeply misleading.
This isn’t about hating faith. It’s about separating myth from history.
Religion Was My Inheritance, Not My Choice
Nobody is born religious. People are born into religions. Geography decides more theology than truth ever has. A child born in Texas gets Jesus. A child born in Tehran gets Islam. A child born in Mumbai gets Hinduism. Same brains. Same curiosity. Same fears. Different stories.
That alone should make anyone suspicious.
I didn’t grow up in a religious family, and no one told me what to believe or not believe. The only religious event I ever attended was the funeral of my paternal great-uncle when I was seven, and that was about it. As a child, I thought religion should be about God caring about morality, not about what you wear, who you have sex with, or following some ancient book as if it were an instruction manual. Fundamentalists and their irrationality were often the butt of jokes in my home, and I believed your conscience should be your guide.
However, this doesn’t mean I grew up in a vacuum. Religion was in the air. In language. In holidays. In moral lectures. In what counted as “normal” and what counted as dangerous thinking. Even when people say they’re not religious, they’re
