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The Meaningful Endurance of Religion
It was Karl Marx that famously uttered the line “religion is the opium of the people”. The founder of socialist philosophy himself believed that religion was contemptible and marked the deplorable weakness of the masses in their pursuit of “illusory happiness”. Marx, of course, detested religious sentiments in favor of an overarching economic explanation of the world. His words, though a very extreme example, bear testament to the perceived value of religion in the modern world.
It’s true that on American soil religiosity has never been scarce and even today, our nation is home to very devout peoples. However, in the centers of media, entertainment, and those metropolitan areas generally on the cultural fore, religion has had a deteriorating reputation for some time now. Research indicates that religiosity is usually associated with negative affect. Interestingly, “spirituality” enjoys far more positive associations.
If religion is actually fading into the background as an antiquated idea, this should rightly be a cultural concern. Religions have a considerable influence in helping to moor cultures, for one thing. Religion also — by supplying a worldview and often usually involving a community aspect and a humanitarian impulse — tends to handily sop up a lot of citizen discontent. And by that I mean, people absent of any religious threads tend to…
