Introduction

A 2009 book titled Perspectives on Gramsci assembled a dozen scholars from the humanities and social sciences to demonstrate the contemporary importance of Gramsci to their respective elds of inquiry. According to its editor, the book “will be of interest to students and scholars of political philosophy, economics, lm and media studies, sociology, education, literature, post-colonial studies, anthropology, subaltern studies, cultural studies, linguistics and international relations” (Francese 2009: i). Notably absent from this list are religious studies and comparative ethics. Indeed, these are typically not included among those elds of inquiry that have been substantially inuenced by an encounter with Gramsci’s thought. This is despite the fact that many of his key ideas-ideology, hegemony, common sense, “traditional” and “organic” intellectuals, passive revolution, intellectual and moral reformation-were developed in the context of his reections on the history of religions, especially Christianity, and in the context of his interpretation of Marxism according to a religious paradigm. In the present work I explore how the study of religion and ethics can benet from a more thorough engagement with Gramsci’s thought.