I think you make excellent points, probably well informed by being a québecoise of your generation. You directly know what it’s like to have religion imposed on you as a function of social control. The Quiet Revolution in Quebec was, after all, a rejection of Catholicism sparked by outrage at the Church’s willing participation maintaining the social and political inferiority of French speakers.

When the majority francophone population of Quebec seized the social and political power denied to them for generations, they also threw the Church out on its ass. When I moved to Montreal, I learned that almost every French speaker my generation and older fiercely resented the imposition of organized religion.

But we’ve never had that kind of crystallizing moment in the United States. Probably because we’ve never been socially dominated by a single Church.

I feel a certain amount of hope (counterintuitively) now that right-wing Christians in much of the United States are succeeding in exercising strong social control, even when they are in minority.

It gives me hope that the majority will soon throw their churches out on their metaphorical asses.