What you're describing is the authoritarian personality, unfortunately religion is a perfect channel for that person, they need subordinates to torture, tyrannise over or kill and superiors to submit to, this is true even of characters like Hitler, he was constantly saying that he was at the service of nation, volk, God, and didnt set himself up as a sole authority unto himself.
Those individuals are always suspiscious of others, even those that comply with them or submit to them or serve them, the subordinate class or caste or person, they always suspect that they are insincere and doubt that they want to be at their service, so their hatred and control freakery mounts in an unsustainable way, either the subject revolts or is destroyed and the sadistic-authoritarian type is then left without an object to manipulate and cant cope either. Its why every sadistic type is really a masochistic type too because they cant do without the person to torture and vent their control anxieties on.
To a degree, there is some truth in whay you say, but I said that because religion was originally designed to increase and harmony, but there are people who are willing to take advantage of naive people. I believe that it is the person that creates harmony or conflict because while religion drive them, but all people should accept the person's religious beliefs.