It's the combination of a desire for student obedience and the intellectual damaging power of religion. Far too often a young student is told their youthful and essentially unsocialized behavior is sinful, including their own thoughts, and that coupled with an Orwellian level of obedience socialization with religion and you create crippled intellects that are afraid of their own thoughts and are perfectly obedient church members and employees. They are minions in the most literal sense and the United States is filled with them, obedient and terribly dangerous.