One thing that I think a lot of people on both sides of the 'Jedi Critique' issue (i.e. Pro Jedi and Jedi Critical) either don't notice, don't think about or don't realize, is that Jedi-ism (for lack of a better word) is a religion.
Like, they know that, but a lot of them don't think about what it means.
Take the Jedi Code, for instance. Sort of the foundational text of the order, the core of what it is to be a Jedi. Ultimately, everything derives from that, or everything distills down to that. On the surface, it is simple enough, ish. But...
I mean, take the ten commandments, from Christianity (and Judaism, but I'm particularly talking about the Christian context here). They seem pretty simple and straightforward. But there have been oceans of ink spilled over what the specific meanings of each commandment really is, and the exceptions and the carveouts (even if they probably don't mean it like that) to some of them and how one actually violates them.
A Religion almost always has very simple teachings at it's base. Christianity can be summed up with: embrace Jesus and achieve salvation. That's something that most Christians would agree is accurate...ish, but it's also utterly incomplete.
Or: Jesus is the son of God, and there's a trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That Jesus is both human and divine. All seemingly simple, no? And yet, hooooooo boy has Christianity had a ton of disputes about what that all means. A nonexhaustive list of controversies/heresies related to those two (distinct) ideas just off the top of my head: Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophytism, Miaphytism, Monothelitism, Monoenergism, Unitarianism
All this to say - Jedi have teachings. A Code. Rules. A specific stricture and doctrine. But holy shit are there probably a ton of ways to understand and interpret them. And we see that in action in even in the much simplified and stripped down Disney Canon, let alone the OG expanded legends.
We have seen the execution of Jedi teachings vary over time, and we've seen how even in the same era, different Jedi will understand the code and rules differently.
Based on my own understanding of the (Expanded Legends) lore, you get the idea that before the Ruusan Reformations, the Jedi were probably a lot more diverse in their teachings or rather - a lot more diverse in what counted as acceptable deviations from whatever Orthodoxy the High Council set down (and I don't mean that in like, some 'oh no they're autocrats way, I mean, the High Council as the leaders of the Order presumably had a legitimate hand in adjudicating any doctrinal questions that made it to them). Various sources in the EU will show a diversity of jedi opinions around certain key controversies, and many stay fine within the Order.
Now, there were things that get people cast out - the OG Dark Jedi that started the Hundred Years Darkness, Kreia, etc. But there probably was more acceptable diversity of opinion - as source for that, I'll note that a key provision of the Ruusan Reformations was that the Order centralized all teaching and organization through the Temple on Coruscant. That tends to be a technique to prevent ideological deviation. (Also, it fits within the larger trends of the SW galaxy during the PT era, within the EU, where everything is stagnating and ossifying and has become less flexible).
But even during the PT itself, we see that variation, a bit. Just less, just narrower.
Critics of the Jedi will make great hay about the teachings of the Jedi re: Emotion and Attachment. And to be clear, I think the Jedi are a little inflexible on that front, across all eras, but especially the PT.
But I would also say that in religion... doctrine is rarely so simple. Words... don't always mean their surface meaning. There's usually layer upon layer of deeper meaning. Theology is complicated. So we need to look as much at Jedi action as Jedi words. We need to consider that the code is as much aspirational as it is... dictatorial (in the sense of dictating action and thought).
Jedi are supposed to strive for that, perhaps, but I mean, most major religions I'm aware of tend to at least have some grasp of the idea that you can fail to perfectly live up to the goals of the religion, even make outright sins, and keep striving, keep trying to follow those teachings. There's some things that might be seen as unsalvageable and permanently condemnatory, but falling short? Probably not, for most.
So Critics of the Jedi have a tendency to take that very surface reading of the rules and the Code, and so on, and then assume they know what they mean, and attack the Jedi on that basis.
On the other hand... there are people who will take 'the rules' on a very strict, surface basis, and treat any falling short as unforgiveable. And those teachings, when more interpreted, can sometimes still be pretty strict. And there's enough variation in how we see Jedi behaving in the EU (and even in Disney Canon) and even in the PT itself that we can see some are more strict than others.
Defenders of the Jedi need to remember that that strictness will exist. That when you have teachings that are so seemingly restrictive on the surface, some people are going to take that surface as gospel. They're going to scratch the surface and, to quote Cordelia Chase, find just more surface. They are going to interpret things strictly.
There are going to be Jedi that are real assholes about the doctrines regarding Emotion and Attachment, real sticklers. Maybe they're as 'wrong' about their views as say, fundamentalists christians are (according to moderate and liberal Christians) or say, Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists are about Islam (according to so many people who - rightly - point out that groups like ISIS and Al Queda etc don't actually represent all that there is in Islam and they get certain teachings wrong, etc). But they're still part of the Jedi and still creating that perception.
Jedi teachings are a religion, and religions are complicated, nuanced and full of layers. Words can have multiple or archaic meanings, there's often translations, there's context to how something was written thousands of years ago now forgotten by most and a million other things.
Jedi teachings are not simple. And at the end of the day, we're only getting what actually makes it into the material. There's going to have to be some interpretation and expansion.
There's a reason religion have a tendency to split into subsets. Almost every religion has sects and divergent tendencies and offshoots and heterodoxies and heresies and splits and subsects and so on and so on.
Shit's complicated, guys.
