ABSTRACT
The seminal insight in accounts of the sociology of knowledge as they apply to theology is the specific correlation between differing types of theology and differing types of social structure. Within 'ideology' consciousness and conceptions are determinative: within the thesis advanced by Marx and Engels life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. Karl Mannheim distinguished between three types of ideology – the 'particular', the 'total' and the 'general' – believing that it was only the last which constituted a genuine sociology of knowledge. Werner Stark believed that a distinction must be made between 'ideology' and 'knowledge', between 'doctrine of ideology' and the 'sociology of knowledge'. From his writings in both the sociology of knowledge and the sociology of religion, it is evident that Stark viewed theology as 'knowledge' rather than 'ideology' and, thus, as properly subject to the discipline of sociology of knowledge. Critical Theory or Post-Structuralism has become particularly important within Humanities during the last decade.
