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Gospel or Religious Language?: Engels on the Peasant War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

John Maguire
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Dialogue between Marxists and Christians is no longer surprising. It seems to me, however, that it frequently takes place on far too wide a plane. Marxism and Christianity are juxtaposed as two competitive all-embracing ‘philosophies of man’, and the discussion is conducted in ultimate, cosmological and metaphysical terms. I realize that this is all very well, and probably very necessary too; it does not, however, seem to me to exhaust all the interesting and important questions that Christians and Marxists, or Marxist Christians, should explore.

I write now for Christians who, in their understanding of society, social change and political controversy, recognize that Marx has made a fundamental and essential contribution to our diagnosis of social ills and our prescription for their cure. Along with these positions, they (probably necessarily) accept Marx’s criticism of the repression, physical and psychological, which have at times been perpetrated and justified in the name of Christianity.

I will assume, then, that if my reader has any quarrels with Marxism, it is not on the broad issues that I have just mentioned. We will then be able to look at another kind of question, which I think is equally interesting and important.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 54 , Issue 639 , August 1973 , pp. 340 - 353
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

page 341 note 1 The passage in question is that reprinted in On Religion by Marx, and Engels, (Moscow, n.d.), pp. 97–118Google Scholar. References directly following quotations are to this source.

page 341 note 2 Bottomore, T. B. (Ed. and Trans.) Karl Marx: Early Writings (London, 1963), p. 58Google Scholar. In development of this and related themes see my Marx's Paris Writings: an Analysis (Dublin, 1972)Google Scholar especially chapters one and two.

page 342 note 1 Bottomore, p. 55.