{"id":14515,"date":"2022-04-15T09:03:02","date_gmt":"2022-04-15T08:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/culture-for-all-why-religion-matters\/"},"modified":"2022-04-15T09:03:02","modified_gmt":"2022-04-15T08:03:02","slug":"culture-for-all-why-religion-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/culture-for-all-why-religion-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Culture for All: Why Religion Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-14514\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a3d3006b022af92f9255b8a42d389e65.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"587\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a3d3006b022af92f9255b8a42d389e65.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a3d3006b022af92f9255b8a42d389e65-600x550.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a3d3006b022af92f9255b8a42d389e65-300x275.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a3d3006b022af92f9255b8a42d389e65-441x404.jpg 441w, https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a3d3006b022af92f9255b8a42d389e65-1x1.jpg 1w, https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a3d3006b022af92f9255b8a42d389e65-10x10.jpg 10w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>As part of the <strong>Culture for All<\/strong> series, supported by the Communication Workers Union, we&#8217;re proud to present a short film about religion, written by James Crossley.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EPVqvkQRAkM\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Why Religion Matters<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>by James Crossley<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Religious ideas have been central to human culture and society for thousands of years. They have been the inspiration behind art, architecture, and epic literature from the Bible to the Qur\u2019an, from Homer\u2019s Odyssey to Icelandic sagas.<\/p>\n<p>Whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, whether we agree with them or not, religious ideas have influenced systems of morality and our very understandings of life and death.<\/p>\n<p>Traditional expressions of religion are still with us. Today, people will experience religious buildings and ceremonies at weddings and funerals\u2014or even when visiting a historic town. But even in twenty-first-century Britain where church attendance is in years long decline, religious-related ideas remain widespread, such as in beliefs in the afterlife, guardian angels, horoscopes, or alternative spiritualities. Many popular sayings in English are from the Bible. Think of \u2018eye for an eye\u2019, \u2018love thy neighbour\u2019, Good Samaritan, \u2018the blind leading the blind\u2019, \u2018cast the first stone\u2019, \u2018eat drink and be merry\u2019, \u2018writing on the wall\u2019, and many more.<\/p>\n<p>We all know that religion has justified acts of bigotry and even extreme brutality. Even to this day, we only need think of groups like ISIS, American presidents going to war with the enthusiastic backing of Christian fundamentalists, or far right attacks on Muslims on the basis of their religion supposedly being incompatible with the values of a supposedly Christian country.<\/p>\n<p>In this country, the medieval church justified the social hierarchy, class relations, and oppression with reference to God, theology, and the Bible. This has even been updated to be relevant for today\u2019s ruling class\u2014the austerity measures under David Cameron\u2019s governments were justified with reference to a Thatcherite reading of the Bible in favour of charity rather than a strong welfare state.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Liberatiuon Theology and revolutionary change<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But religion has also inspired reactions against the ruling class. Liberation Theology in Latin America emerged in opposition to American imperialism where religion and the interests of workers and peasants has gone hand-in-hand and where priests have even been murdered for taking a stand.<\/p>\n<p>Radical traditions can be found arguably in any religious tradition, particularly when attacking landowners and the wealthy, demanding care for the poorest in society, and providing a community as protection for the individual. These common ideas across religious traditions can be taken not only in reformist directions but used to justify more revolutionary change. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism (and no doubt many more) have long traditions noting the connections between their teachings and Marxism or socialism\u2014sometimes to the point that they are seen as one and the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>And while religious capitalists preach a gospel of wealth being as a result of hard work and a sign of being blessed by God, religion has simultaneously provided opposition to this fantasy by also being used on the side of the workers. The rise of the labour movement in Britain owed much to Christian and Jewish socialists with their traditions of combatting poverty, homelessness, and deprivation and a hope for a transformed world sometimes labelled a New Jerusalem.<\/p>\n<p>And that religion has been part of the labour movement should be no surprise given our national history where religion has been integral to any number of revolutionary movements. Think, for instance, of the Peasants\u2019 Revolt of 1381 inspired by ideas from the Bible about social equality and a time when all things would be shared in common. Or think of the English Revolution of the seventeenth century and the advancements made in democratic thought and visionary ideas of a better future by religious figures from outside the established church.<\/p>\n<p>Religion isn\u2019t automatically good or bad, pro- or anti-worker, revolutionary or reactionary, any more than film or literature are. But it can be all these things because it is an integral part of human culture and society, a shared language.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8216;Religion is the opium of the people&#8217;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Karl Marx got religion right, though maybe not in the way many people think. Marx famously claimed that religion is \u2018the opium of the people\u2019. This is popularly understood as an outright attack on religion as manipulation. But if we read the fuller version of the saying we see that Marx knew how complicated religion could be: \u2018The wretchedness of religion,\u2019 he stressed, \u2018is at once an expression of and protest against real wretchedness. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>This is why even some atheists have embraced the more revolutionary parts of religion as a way of understanding what a better world would look like and how to achieve it. People like William Morris\u2014who had long given up his faith by the time he was active in politics\u2014saw the values of solidarity, community, and pride in work emerging from our shared religious heritage, ideas which should not be lost and could now challenge and help overthrow the uncaring individualism of capitalism. We should not underestimate the appeal of these values in an era when loneliness has thrived as a consequence of contemporary capitalism.<\/p>\n<p>In everyday practices we see the connections made between non-religious and religious people\u2014campaigning on housing, welfare, and poverty regularly involves people from churches and mosques working alongside agnostics and atheists. No matter how their values are personally justified, the reason why such people can work together is that they clearly do have shared beliefs, goals, and concerns about the devastation caused by a class-ridden society.<\/p>\n<p>People from whatever tradition who interpret their religion in such ways\u2014whether committed members of a radical religious community or casual believer\u2014are potentially part of any response to a heartless world as much as agnostics and atheists who likewise want to overturn class oppression. This should <em>not<\/em> mean accepting any views\u2014reactionary views must be challenged, religious or otherwise. And the labour movement cannot promote this or that religion and will remain central in opposing ongoing imperialist and capitalist versions of religion. But the trade unions and the labour movement are now the main custodians of those inherited and shared values of solidarity and community which will one day transform the world. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As part of the Culture for All series, supported by the Communication Workers Union, we&#8217;re proud to present a short film about religion, written by James Crossley.\u00a0&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":371,"featured_media":14514,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1646],"tags":[2056,1965,2582,1953],"class_list":["post-14515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-religion","tag-john-ball","tag-karl-marx","tag-liberation-theology","tag-william-morris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/371"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}