Should I Renounce a Religious Group That’s Taken a Bad Turn?

I’m in my 50s and, since my college days, have been associated with a monastic organization based in India. The founder was Hindu, but he and the organization espoused universal values, and over decades I’ve deeply embraced their way of life, forming close bonds within the community.

Recently, though, I’ve noticed monks aligning with the current political regime, privately sharing content hostile to other religions in WhatsApp groups. Attempts to reason with members have failed, and dissent risks ostracism.

I’m torn between disconnecting from these groups — which are my main link to the community — and maintaining decades of cherished relationships and personal guidance. Walking away means losing my identity and community, while staying makes me feel guilty inside. — Name Withheld

From the Ethicist:

‘‘Exit, Voice, and Loyalty’’ — the title of a classic 1970 treatise by the great economist and political scientist Albert O. Hirschman — identified three possible responses to a dysfunctional or failing organization: leaving; speaking up for change; or just sticking it out. It’s to your credit that you’ve used your voice to challenge religious bigotry among these monastics, and in the current atmosphere of Hindutva, your worries about being shunned if you persist are doubtless warranted — it would amount to exit.

Exit, alas, means cutting off part of yourself and losing any chance to influence the group. Hirschman knew that people might combine those three strategies in various degrees, and in this spirit, you might consider selective engagement. Being part of an online group that includes people promoting a wicked agenda doesn’t make you complicit with that agenda. You can honor the organization’s core spiritual practices and original values while quietly distancing yourself from its defections from them, even if you aren’t overtly dissenting. Sometimes, as Hirschman knew, staying engaged with flawed institutions allows you to serve as a moderating presence, possibly influencing future developments from within.

In fact, Hirschman suggested that when it comes to certain misguided and menacing entities — notably, states — what we actually need from wiser policymakers is ‘‘a measure of spinelessness.’’ That way, some of them would remain ‘‘inside’’ so that, when the moment comes, they might be able to influence things. (And yes, he knew that spinelessness was something we usually had in excess.) We could dismiss all this as the rationalizations of a cosseted academic. Yet Hirschman had some firsthand experience in confronting toxic nationalism. Raised in Berlin, he pitched in with the anti-fascists as a student there, fought fascists in the Spanish Civil War, worked with the French Resistance and then, rather than retreating to safety, helped rescue thousands of people from Nazi-occupied Europe. When the stakes were grave, he thought it might be more important to have strong hands than clean hands — and to be around when you could make a difference.