About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

32 J. Church & St. 511 (1990)
Religion as Opiate: Church and Revolution in Comparative Structural Perspective

handle is hein.journals/jchs32 and id is 517 raw text is: Religion as Opiate: Church and Revolution in Comparative Structural Perspective DAVID KOWALEWSKI and ARTHUR L. GREIL Religion, Karl Marx wrote, is the sign of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soul- less conditions. It is the opium of the people.1 Does religion serve, as Marx claimed, to maintain the status quo by focusing the attention of the masses onto the spiritual dimension and by deflecting their gaze away from an awareness of social injustice? Today most students of church-state relations would agree that posing the question in this binary form can succeed only in muddying the waters of analysis. Rather, a specification of the structural conditions under which religion is more or less likely to be associated with political dissent may promise a more fruit- ful avenue of inquiry. The present essay offers an initial concep- tual framework for specifying the circumstances under which religion may be likely to play anti-change or pro-change roles in mass-based rebellions and what consequences flow from these differences in religious involvement. A careful reading of Marx's work reveals little truly anti-reli- gious sentiment. Marx eschewed any labeling of religious faiths as merely repressive mechanisms operating to hide from the working class its true interests. Rather he explicitly noted that religion is not only the sigh of the oppressed creature, but ex- presses real, not imagined, distress. Religion, he said, is far from an evil; it is an authentic, if usually mystified and unproductive, * DAVID KOWALEWSKI (M.A., University of Oklahoma; M.A., University of Kan- sas; Ph.D. University of Kansas) is associate professor of political science at Alfred University. He is the author of Transnational Corporations and Caribbean Ine- qualities (1982). ARTHUR L. GREIL (B.A., Syracuse University; M.A. and Ph.D. Rutgers University) is professor of sociology at Alfred University. He is the author of Georges Sorrell and the Sociology of Virtue (1981) and Not Yet Pregnant: Infer- tile Couples in Contemporary America (forthcoming). 1. In T.B. Bottomore and M. Rubel, eds., Selected Writings in Sociology and So- cial Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956), 26-27.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most