The Religious Void

[Apollo]

A brief thought for discussion:

It's not difficult to find religious behavior in nonreligious places. The US elections is a recent example of how easily cult-like and religious undertones begin to emerge in politics and otherwise secular groups. We are fundamentally religious creatures, and seem to default towards this mode of thinking when gathered too strongly into groups.

My question is this:

Is it better to have a well defined religious structure in which religious activities can exist rather than no structure at all; and does that successfully deminish religious behavior elsewhere?

In my own experience, being raised Christian does seem to stop me from having religious affiliation with other groups like politics. And I generally find it odd when I meet a Christian that is religiously political.

I think you may have this other way around.  We humans as social animals have certain group characteristics and behaviors which lead to forming various cultures and rituals.  This comes first.  Religion comes later.  Religion simply rides on existing waves of social practices and morph our social frameworks according its desired state of conformance abidance. 

This is why words like congregation, community, charity, commune, kinship etc seem to have "religious" connotations. But in reality as social animals, cooperation, social altruism, and friendship etc give rise to such social practices and have always been part of our evolutionary past in various different forms.

Fact of the matter is that anytime you'd have number of people living under some kind of group arrangement, you'll end up having some rules and hierarchy, and temperamental resistance and conflicts, as well, agreements to them. That's just group dynamic.