ABSTRACT
Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, claimed that there are many structural similarities between Christianity and Marxism. 1 If we call Marxism a political ideology, this indicates an interesting relationship between a religion and an ideology. If, on the other hand, we accept the Marxist concept of ideology—which is to say false consciousness—then a given religion can be labelled an ideology in contradistinction to Marxism. 2 These examples will perhaps serve to demonstrate that the terms ‘religion’ and ‘ideology’ point in different ways to a field in the world of human ideas and reactions that deserves closer examination. It is also obvious, however, that anyone wishing to study the relationship between religion and ideology risks getting stuck in a conceptual bog. The term ‘ideology’ has acquired a bewildering number of different meanings, while the problems involved in defining the concept of religion are well known. In the following, we will first select and define a useful concept of ideology, and make some remarks on the concept of religion. It will then be possible to point to some relationships between religion and one of its neighbours.
