Religions can’t survive without the use of force and coercion because they are artificial thought systems based on an absence of knowledge. They can only survive in an intellectually closed environment as evidenced by the inverse correlation between education and religiosity.
When they are subject to outside (worldly, secular) knowledge they start losing followers to the point of total collapse. So the only way to preserve them is through force. To separate their subjects from other lines of thinking by laws, social customs and doctrine. And ultimately by killing the sources of alternate knowledge.
Blasphemy laws are still popular around the world for this reason. Particularly in the middle east where they prescribe the death penalty. The Taliban are fighting to keep western thinking out of their schools and Iran and Saudi Arabia have their religious police to enforce compliance.
The Christians had their own purges killing off thousands of innocent people because they weren’t properly faithful. History has labeled the latest ones as the Spanish Inquisition and Colonial America.
The Pilgrims came to America not so much to pursue religious freedom as to escape the pressures of social assimilation in the Netherlands. Then they passed restrictive laws in an effort to preserve their religious ways. But they didn’t survive for long. Within a few dozen years they were overpowered by secular thinkers who enshrined religious freedom into the constitution.
If religions were true they could stand up to secular thinking on their own merits without the use of force and coercion. But they aren’t true – which is why they are failing. People are naturally drawn to secular ways of thinking.
The only way for the religious systems to survive is to force it on those within its scope of influence. To remove exposure to outside thinking and gain compliance through coercion, intimidation and if necessary, force.
But that’s only delaying the inevitable. Secular thinking will prevail because it’s real and religions aren’t.