To read this content please select one of the options below:

INTRODUCTION: RELIGION AND CHANGE

Roy Wallis (Department of Social Studies,The Queen's University,Belfast BT7 1NN,N. Ireland.)

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy

ISSN: 0144-333X

Article publication date: 1 January 1982

195

Abstract

Religion has long been seen as a conservative force in society. This view has informed the rhetoric and theory of many reformers and social philosophers in Europe in recent centuries, where religious institutions often historically developed a rather too comfortable accommodation with the state and ruling class. Religion came, therefore, to be viewed as essentially supportive of the status quo and hostile to change. Marx was one of the reformers and social philosophers to voice just such a view. For him, religion was primarily an ideological tool by means of which the ruling class legitimated its position, and mystified those whom it exploited by conveying the conception that the prevailing social order was not simply a product of the ruthless exercise of a monopoly of power and profit in the interest of a particular social group, but rather a divinely ordained order. Religion, then, further undermined the capacity for protest and rebellion among the disadvantaged, by promising equity and justice in a life hereafter, contingent in part upon accepting the injustice and inequality of the life here below.

Citation

Wallis, R. (1982), "INTRODUCTION: RELIGION AND CHANGE", International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 2-7. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb012938

Publisher

:

MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 1982, MCB UP Limited

Related articles