@turquoisewaters
the religious leaders within a religious institution at a specific place can and do affect the class of people who attend
I thin we are confusing 'class' or 'economic strata' with 'religion'
Personally I've never come across a religious school that used 'class' or 'money' as entry criteria.
If the requirement includes attending a particular religious building in a particular place, then it doesn't need to be overt in the admission criteria. All they need to do is decide - just like any institution - what type of people they will welcome and which they will make it harder to attend.
Why do you think the remarks of "cheats" are "middle class" rather than working class which if anything from the state of working class results and education in the UK, would have far more reasons to "cheat". Are working class people just more ethical - or are institutional barriers that religious leaders can ignore, support, or actively work to bring down part of the situation as well when it comes to class?
I'm not confusing economic strata or class with religion. Classism and actions based on perception of economic strata can be part of the corruption within any institution and institutions that do nothing to counter wider social classism will inevitable have those problems too.
As I've said in previous posts, I know non-faith schools with strong religious ethos that have Pupil Premium as a high priority marker, third just behind the required ones for looked after and medical reasons. That's valuing openness. Saying only people of X faith who can prove it by Y amount of attendance feels like valuing control.
I don't agree with those concepts either. But I do require that the school is in alignment with the teachings that I want my children to incorporate. They are my children and I will and should have a prevalent say in how they are educated. Would you allow your MIL for instance or any random to instil beliefs in your children that you do not agree with because someone thinks it will be 'fairer' to them?
Yes, my children are allowed to be part of wider society that may instill values that have nothing to do with me and what I believe. Their friends have values that I don't agree with, they read books and see media that have values I don't have -- just like I had friends with values my parents didn't agree with and read things they didn't like. I don't feel I've a write to control that, especially with teenagers.
I allow my children to take part in everything their friends and schools have about Christmas or Easter that they want even though we do not celebrate those holidays within the home. I allow my DDs' to attend a school with loud religious ethos even as a philosophical monist who thinks humans lack the capacity to know anything about the nature of divinity because my older DD wanted to transfer there in Y7.
And yes, my children saw my MIL smoke and heard her values even though I didn't agree with many of them. I let my eldest stay with her for weeks one summer and it resulted in him getting a smart phone I hadn't wanted and a haircut that I have a feeling my in-laws played a role in as they hated long hair on males - which we heard a lot about as my spouse has waist length hair. I let them around their late great grandmother and have kept some of her religious books in the house even though I firmly disagree and think too many in power within it abuse said power.
I can tell you that the world would be a much worse place to live in if it weren't for the efforts of most religions (despite the occasional mishaps - which occur in every organisation-)
Religion is an incentivising tool - whether as a system it promotes greater good or not depends on those in power within it. Whether things would be 'much worse' is debateable when there are many other incentivising tools that are used alongside it - it's never been the only incentive for people to cooperate.
Corruption happens in every institution - yes, it takes intense vigilance and scrutiny to nip corruption -- but calling the institutional abuse, the violence, the deaths, the harmful, active efforts of many religious leaders and those who've held power within religions as "occasional mishaps" is pretty disgusting. Do you call rapes or death in state custody "occasional mishaps"? Do you call state supported genocide a "mishap"? Children that have gone "missing" or abused while in state care? Leaders, secular or religious, who motivate these things are guilty of far more than a mishap and should be held to account.
Have people never seen a bunch of seagulls fighting over a piece of bread? That's what 'humanity' would be were it not for the message imparted by most religions (which some appear to be so disgusted by)
It is said the first sign of true humanity is a healed femur, though I think this was in Neaderthals cared for their injured is among the earliest we've found.
I work with a lot of sociobiological data and actually, there are a lot of examples in the animal kingdom of animals caring for even animals of other species let alone their own kin, so I may not entirely agree with the sentiment that it's uniquely human , but we've also lot of evidence of humans caring well before religions or even complex language came into play. Part of how we succeed as a species is through cooperation - even with all the horrors of humanity, historical evidence suggests we've long been far less violent than even our closest primate kin.
Corruption is something to be vigilant against, one of the corrupting forces is to think the worst of others, that they require to be controlled - that disincentives cooperation. I mean, the vast majority of people queue nicely without threat, there are outliers and situations that provoke people, but most of the time, most people are not going to fight over bread for no reason even without religion involved. We're socially very different to seagulls.