2 - Hegemony, ideology and determination

Summary

CLOSENESS AND DISTANCE AGAIN

Marx contrasted true knowledge with what he called ideology. Hence the importance of the latter term throughout my argument. The nerve of the argument might be summed up in the question: is Christian theology ideological? And, following from this point, is it possible to conceive of a Christian theology that is not ideological? This is centrally a question about the production of knowledge. Here the spatial metaphor of closeness and distance is important as it offers a way of highlighting the problem concerning the social location of theology: what is the relation of theological discourse to the material basis from which it arises? And can the incorporation of theology as ideological discourse be avoided?

So far the critique of ideology has been restricted to examples from political theory and the philosophy of science. This has been quite deliberate. I wanted to show that the critique of ideology has no favourites; the task of critique is common across all disciplines. By taking this route I also wish to make another point. Marx and Engels do appear to have taken the view that Christianity was inherently reactionary. It is not perhaps fully clear why they adopted this argument, nor why (see Turner, 1983: 168–9; Lash, 1986a: 133–4) they found it so persuasive.