Andrew Breitbart: "Politics is downstream of culture."
True as far as it goes.
Organized religion is downstream of both.
Note the modifier "organized."
I'm not saying that every self-described prophet or messiah or buddha or whatever sat down with a sheet of paper and said to hirself "what kind of god-story can I concoct that reflects and draws on the present zeitgeist and political system in a way that causes it to become widely believed/adopted?"
I'm saying that organized religion ends tends to conform itself to the prevailing cultural norms and political systems of its operating environment
Prime example: Many if not most religious Jews rejected Zionism -- an ethno-nationalist political philosophy -- until Israel was firmly enough established to become both culturally popular with Jews and politically powerful enough to use that popularity to warp most organized establishments of Judaism to its liking.
Exceptions tend to prove the rule.
Yes, there are religious sects in the United States that reject war and other politically driven and popular ideas. They tend to be small, and some are always dying out even as new ones are created
Yes, even some of the bigger denominations may have this or that issue on which they disagree with the official and the popular, and some may carve out specific demographic niches to cater to that are small but dedicated.
But for the most part, the big, popular churches love them some Pledge of Allegiance / Back the Blue / Support the Troops / etc.
Not because their stated religious tenets require it -- in some cases, by some readings, those tenets might even forbid it.
Because they like being big and popular, and the way to be big and popular is to go wherever the cultural and political crowds go.
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