What lies behind the appeal of religion?

Pope Francis in St Peter’s Square, two months after he was first elected (Picture: Edgar Jiménez)

Pope Francis was mourned by millions of Catholics and some non-Catholics who saw him as a supporter of the Palestinians and a friend of refugees. 

But his funeral was also a nauseating spectacle of official pomp, attended by the world’s biggest warmongers. And whatever Francis believed, the Catholic Church is a profoundly oppressive and reactionary institution.

But how do Marxists understand the enduring appeal of religion?

Marxists are sometimes accused of dismissing religion as a tool used by our rulers to keep us passive and submissive. But this is not what Marx argued.

It is true that Marxism is a materialist theory. Human beings are part of nature, but they are a distinct part because they have consciousness.

People’s ideas, opinions and conceptions change with changes in how they organise to produce what they need.

That organisation of production is the foundation on which state institutions, the legal system, the media, religion and other ideas evolve.

So, Marx observed, “Man makes religion, religion does not make man.”

In capitalist society, human beings are alienated from their ability to collectively produce what they need. Social institutions and economic production can appear to be beyond any control and people feel powerless.

This alienation creates an inverted world in which humans look to an all-powerful god of their own making.

So religion is not just dogma and irrational superstition. It is the way people try to make sense of their experiences, cope with grief and give life deeper meaning.

Marx did not simply dismiss religion as the “opium of the people”. He understood that “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 circumstances. It is the opium of the people.”

Religion is deeply contradictory. Every religious text can be interpreted to justify submission and oppression.

Religious hierarchies enrich the few and facilitate abuse. But the same texts can encourage progressive, radical and even revolutionary movements. Those confronting racism and colonialism have found strength and networks of resistance in their churches, mosques and temples.

There are commentators who dismiss this aspect of religion. They say religion is the root cause of wars and conflict, not imperialism. They think their clever arguments will enlighten ignorant believers.

Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin had an answer to these elitist atheists. “Why does religion retain its hold? Because of the ignorance of the people, replies the bourgeois progressivist, the radical or the bourgeois materialist. And so, ‘Down with religion and long live atheism, the dissemination of atheist views is our chief task!’ The Marxist says that it is a superficial view.

“The deepest root of religion today is the socially downtrodden condition of the working masses and their apparently complete helplessness in face of the blind forces of capitalism.”

So revolutionary socialists oppose banning religion. Lenin wrote, “Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion they please.”

But socialists are not neutral. We advocate the separation of the church from the state. Religion has always been a political as well as a personal issue. Christian churches generated ideas of Western superiority and justified imperialist invasions. The British state whipped up hostility to Catholicism to cement its rule in Ireland.

Today, the Evangelical church in the United States wins support from impoverished people— but it mobilises them to back Donald Trump’s attacks on abortion rights and LGBT+ people.

Organised religion may wither away when alienation and exploitation are over-thrown and people can organise society as they choose. Until then, socialists will stand with those whose religion is a “protest against real suffering”.