Faith & Spirit Quote by Mary Douglas

Douglas refuses the lazy binary that religion is either social poison or moral cure, then twists the knife: the real action isn’t in “God,” but in the community doing the shaping. Calling the “religion does more harm than good” line only “partly true” is a calculated deflation of a familiar modern posture - the self-satisfied secular verdict. She’s not defending piety so much as relocating responsibility. If a society ends up with a vengeful God, that vengeance didn’t fall from the sky; it was selected, cultivated, and made to feel inevitable.

The list that follows is doing more work than it seems. “Vengeful” versus “milky sweet” sketches the poles of moral imagination: harsh boundary-policing on one end, sentimental permission on the other. “Scrupulously just” offers a third option that sounds nobler but still reveals the mechanism: even justice can be a community’s preferred aesthetic, a way to legitimize its punishments and rewards. The casual “and so on” is the tell - this is not theology; it’s social anthropology. Gods multiply like political platforms.

Context matters: Douglas built her career explaining how cultures maintain order through classification, purity rules, and taboo. Read through that lens, the quote is a warning about ventriloquism. Societies speak through God when they want their norms to carry supernatural authority. Her intent is bracingly democratic and bracingly accusatory: if religion harms, look for the people who needed it to. If it heals, notice the kind of community capable of imagining a healing God.