... and thanks for sharing a personal story.

The lucky things is that even after a not-so-good-childhood it is possible to find an inner feeling of being loved. Many people attribute that feeling to a god, because in that kind of moments the love might feel somehow total, absolute and stronger. Well, but it easily gets problematic when all kind of other stories and group hierarchies are built on top of inner experiences, and soon we have an organized religion which easily turns into a crowd control as you say. (I think there is a lot of same mechanism in how some political leaders use strong sentiments to control the followers... the followers become dependand on this feeling of being accepted and the awe of belonging to something bigger and stronger. And as they are not strong enough to let go, they just follow the crowd and the leader, stongly believing in what ever the leader is telling is good for them...)

And for some such experiences come with a professional therapy, and some find them through a sports club or a hobby or being with friends. Or wandering alone in the woods. What ever - I think that the ways are numerous, but all in all it still is possible to find an inner feeling of being accepted, even when such feelings were damaged and hurt in the childhood. And the better if we find the inner peace in such a ways which don't lead to further hatred and distrust towards other people =)

I guess it often goes that when a person X finds a strong feeling of being loved and accepted in a group Y, then X starts to believe that the group Y is the only good one, and the rest of the world is worthless, uninteresting, or even bad and evil. But, as you and many others have found, it doesn't need to be that way. The inner love and acceptance is the main thing, and no group, no religion, no nationality, no movement has special rights for that.

Oh, okay, it is half past two o'clock in the night. Maybe I'd better stop writing and hit the hay =)