The more I read about the Religious Right in this country, the more I think that Karl Marx had it wrong about religion being the opiate of the people. I don’t think it calms them, and I don’t think it puts them to sleep. At least on the Right, I think it mainly makes them angry. Here’s what Marx said in context:
“Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”- Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
I think at its best, religion is a protest against suffering. I know that is what I took away from my religious education. But all I see and hear from the Right is excuse-making for suffering. The suffering always seem to have earned their plight. And if they haven’t, the Right is angry about that, too. I don’t want to abolish religion. I just want people to live and let live.
