Send us a textMarx on Religion  In my class on Religion and Politics, I had three lectures on the Marxian model.  One was on Marx’s view of religion; one was how Marx analyzed the situation of the Jews in Europe; and one was on a fascinating person named Abram Leon.  He was a Zionist and a Trotskyite.  In 1944 he wrote a book trying to make sense of what was happening to the Jews in Europe.  If you are seriously interested in this analysis, then these three talks are made for you.  I think they are fascinating but that is for you to decide. This talk focuses upon Marx and his view of religion.  Warning:  It is NOT what you think.  His thinking was nuanced and analytical and even humanistic.  This talk is an hour and fifteen minutes long.  It covers a lot of ground but I will take you by the hand and try to lead you through the wilderness. Our warped view of Marx came out of the Cold War, that everything having to do with Marx was really, really bad.  He was an evil, scary person who hated God and believed in oppression of religion. I have even read kooky articles suggesting that he was the inspiration for the Holocaust.  Bizarre! I think back in those days people with an agenda sometimes intentionally took every brutal thing that Joseph Stalin ever did and attributed it to Marx.  This talk is not on Marx’s political views but I think he would have been a vigorous opponent of Stalin with his ruthless brutality.  Plus Stalin was Russian; Marx was West German and an activist in the pro-democracy movement of 1848. The Communist Manifesto (not addressed in this talk) was written more than 70 years before Stalin was in power.  It was a political platform warning people not to be misled by false information being spread about what was then called the Workers Party.  This talk was delivered to a class in early 2020 when the pandemic was just starting.  There is reference to study sheets and readings.  At one point I ask students to draw a chart.  These parts might be distracting, but they are short so perhaps you can get through them. I mention a few names you may not know: Engels (colleague of Marx), Tomas Munzer (a populist revolutionary during the peasant wars), and Martin Luther. Words used are hierarchy, guild, Thesis/anti-thesis/synthesis. 

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