INTRODUCTION: RELIGION AND CHANGE

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.