The regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and their other social engineer friends had in common a detestation of religious faith and a belief that God was dead. Man makes his own morality, they argued, and there was no need to listen to any pretend creator or judge. They then promptly murdered hundreds of millions of people. Suddenly any ignorant religious fanatic of the past was made to look the amateur he really was. Which is to say that yes, of course, religion has been used for all sorts of things.
People use love, family, country, freedom, race, anything as a means to go to war or steal or lie.
That religion should be similarly exploited should come as no surprise to anyone who properly understands the world and its inhabitants. Yet what religion, specifically Christianity, also does is to raise billions of dollars to give to the needy while governments attach sometimes punitive conditions to their aid. It establishes health care and education when the secular state, even Canada, is indifferent. It sends doctors, engineers, farmers into war zones and slums ignored by the rest of the world. The war against slavery, the campaign against child labour, redistribution of wealth, social equality, are all Christian concepts and constructs.