A paradox indeed: Indonesia ranks high in religiosity but low in clean governance. Places of worship are crowded; prayer groups flourish. Yet corruption remains a daily reality.

So, if religion is not to blame, what is missing?

Theologians have cautioned against it, psychologists have studied its limits and anthropologists have traced its origins. What is missing is not belief, but a moral compass shaped early before habits and shortcuts take over, what many now call mindset, system 1 thinking, muscle memory or mental models.

WW Howells, in The Heathens: Primitive Man and His Religions, explains that early religion was never primarily moral.

It was a response to fear. Faced with death, disease and natural disasters, early humans created rituals to reduce anxiety and restore order. Religion gave comfort, not necessarily ethics.

This primitive function has not disappeared. Today’s religious practices, prayers, fasting, sacred artifacts, still serve psychological and social needs: belonging, identity and comfort.

However, these rituals do not always shape conduct. One can fear God yet cheat the system. One can wear piety as a badge yet abuse office. Religion works well as a symbol. But without inner conviction, it does not restrain wrongdoing.

The psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg showed why. His six-stage model of moral development explains that people grow from a basic fear of punishment to principled reasoning. But most never reach the higher stages.

Many obey rules to avoid shame or to be accepted by others, not out of justice or compassion.

Public religiosity often reinforces these early stages. One fasts only to be seen, prays to belong, avoids alcohol to gain respect. The moral compass is external. Right and wrong depend on who’s watching.

And so corruption thrives, not because people lack belief, but because belief stays stuck at the surface level.

Kohlberg’s higher stages, questioning unjust laws, defending moral principles, require independent thought. They require courage.

These do not grow in environments obsessed with conformity or authority. They must be taught, patiently, early and repeatedly.

James Rest added depth to this idea. He argued that moral behaviour involves four parts: recognising the ethical issue, knowing what is right, wanting to do it and having the strength to follow through.

Many religious people reach the second part. They know what is right. But without motivation and character, knowledge stays inert. Goodness is not just learned. It must be willed.

Shalom Schwartz’s work on cultural values makes this clearer. In many collectivist societies, values like conformity, loyalty and security are prioritised above truth-telling or fairness. These values stabilise society, but they also suppress moral courage.

Rituals become more important than integrity. Obedience becomes virtue. Dissent becomes deviance.

This prioritisation of harmony and obedience also affects how wrongdoing is perceived, not necessarily by what is done, but by whether it is seen.

Ruth Benedict and Koentjaraningrat both showed that Indonesian society leans more toward a shame culture than a guilt culture.

What matters is not whether something is right, but whether it is seen. The wrongdoing itself is tolerated as long as it stays hidden. When exposure comes, the shame is in being caught, not in having done wrong.

So the question is not “Why are religious people corrupt?” but “Why has religious life become more about performance than formation?”

The rituals are loud. The devotion is visible. But the moral grounding is weak. This is not a rejection of religion, it is a recognition of its limits.

Religion cannot carry what conscience must bear. It can guide, remind, support. But it cannot substitute the long, slow formation of ethical character.

This is where Pancasila, Indonesia’s founding philosophy, offers clarity. The first principle, belief in One Almighty God, was never meant to stand alone.

It must walk with the second (just and civilised humanity), the third (unity), the fourth (deliberative wisdom) and the fifth (social justice). Without these, faith becomes mere performance.

The solution is not more religion. It is a deeper moral formation, from childhood. Ethics must be seeded before the ego hardens.

What is learned early, not just in school, but in family conversations, in what adults model, in what society celebrates, builds the moral core.

Children do not learn moral reasoning by instruction alone. They imitate. They absorb values unconsciously through patterns of care, fairness and honesty modelled in daily life.

If they see adults speak kindly, respect rules, admit mistakes and question power, they learn that character matters. If they see adults perform rituals while lying, cheating or staying silent in the face of wrongdoing, they learn that religion and ethics can live apart.

Adults shaped by shame culture and surface religiosity will not easily unlearn what they were raised to believe. But children, if shown a different model, may grow up with inner clarity that resists corruption not out of fear, but from principle.

Therefore, the transformation of how people think, choose and act must begin in the minds of children today.

Indonesia should not discard religion in the pursuit of morality. That would be a mistake.

Religion is still needed, not as a substitute for ethics, but as its companion.

A person grounded in ritual, who also reflects, reasons and acts with integrity, is more likely to live a balanced and mindful life.

Religion has not failed, its original purpose has been taken for granted. It has been performed, but not lived; enforced, but never ingrained.

Instead of doubling down on rituals for adults, Indonesia would do better to nurture the next generation with quieter, deeper habits. Not just outward practice, but compassion. Not just recitation, but reasoning. Not just conformity, but character.

If reform comes, it will not begin in the courtroom, but in the classroom, in the kitchen, on the playground and at bedtime, when a parent explains why truth matters, even when no one sees.

Religion is not to blame. But when it is reclaimed as a structure for a just and mindful life, it can quietly disarm the roots of corruption, one child at a time.

(Toronata Tambun is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and affiliated alumnus of MIT Sloan School of Management.)