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Marx on Religion, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Edited by John Raines. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002.
Marxist Criticism of the Bible, by Roland Boer. New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003.
John Raines revisits Marx's writings from the 1840s to illustrate the ties binding the critical study of religion and the development of dialectical materialism, and ultimately to emphasize the shared values of secular and religious movements. Roland Boer demonstrates the applicability of Marxist literary theory to the Old Testament, illuminating textual ambiguities and contradictions in relation to the tribute-based economies of the ancient Near East. Both authors emphasize the earthly roots of religious ideas in social conflicts, injecting class analysis into a field of discourse where it is routinely neglected, and they pay particular attention to ways in which religion has served both to legitimate oppression and to voice resistance. These texts provide lucid and accessible discussions forwarding the role of religious analysis in Marx's intellectual development and Marxist contributions to the study of religion.
Key Words: Religion, Marxism, Old Testament, Judaism
These days there is a lot of talk about religion and, underneath all the apocalyptic hokum and flap about the clash of civilizations, one can perceive the beginnings of a sober reassessment of the influence in the world of religious ideas and institutions. Scholars of religion John Raines, a professor at Temple University and also a Methodist minister, and Roland Boer, a senior research fellow at Monash University in Melbourne, have provided us with studies working commendably toward this end. They have the potential to galvanize their discipline through the introjection of long-neglected historical materialist methods.
John Raines's Marx on Religion offers a newly edited reintroduction of Marx's writings on religion to the academic discipline of religious studies. The book consists primarily of the Paris manuscripts of the 1840s further fleshed out by the inclusion of some of Marx's personal correspondence, journalistic work, excerpts from the Manifesto, the Grundrisse, and Capital, and two selections from Engels. These are ordered thematically, beginning with the nature of human consciousness and directed activity, moving to the alienation of consciousness and activity from itself, and ending with the development of a materialist criticism of ideology. Although Raines explicitly seeks to overturn the negative assessment of...