religion

Bauer, Marx and religion - David McLellan

McClellan discusses Bauer's critique of religion and its enduring influence on the young Marx.

The role of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia's holocaust - Seán Mac Mathúna, 1941-1945

Historical information about Catholic priests and Muslim clerics being willing accomplices in the genocide of the Yugoslavia's Serbian, Jewish and Roma population during the Second World War.

During the Second World War in Yugoslavia, Catholic priests and Muslim clerics were willing accomplices in the genocide of the nations Serbian, Jewish and Roma population.

"The Renewal of Medieval Times" in Yugoslavia, 1941

Article from the Fascist-controlled press in Italy in 1941. The author, Corrado Zoli, was traveling through Bosnia and witnessed the Ustase massacres - and the assistance of Franciscan priests in the butchery - firsthand.

There can be little doubt that this article appeared with the agreement of the Fascist Party in Italy, and the Italian Army had already begun to stand between the Ustase and their victims in zones of the NDH under their authority.

Hurricane Katrina, and the good churchgoers of the U.S. South - prole cat

One person's experience of Church aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the United States.

Like many frustrated Southerners in the aftermath of the hurricane named Katrina, I drove a small truck-and-trailer full of food and water to South Mississippi. I met some refugees at a camp site, during the trip down. They appeared to be poor whites. One, a native of Bay St. Louis, was snarling against the "looters", using racial epithets.

The continuing appeal of religion - Troploin

French left-communist journal Troploin doing exactly what they say on the tin. The social function of religion; "The quest for the supernatural does not stem from an excessive but from a limited imagination built by millenniums of exploitation and oppression: the incapacity to be free on Earth incites humans to situate freedom out of this world. Dreams and desires are displaced persons. This is the stuff religion is made of."

A father and an anarchist

An obituary for Father Gresham Kirkby, the anarchist priest.

Fr. Gresham Kirkby, (1916-2006)

It can’t be often, unfortunately, that the bishop of a major country’s capital city having visited an elderly priest, feared to be dying, and then phones a past archbishop’s former chaplain, a sometime mentor of the present archbishop, to say ‘he spoke of the kingdom of God and proclaimed his undying belief in Anarchy’.

Hegel - Chesterton: German Idealism and Christianity - Slavoj Žižek

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Žižek gets theological.

According to a commonplace, Judaism (and Islam) is a "pure" monotheism, while Christianity, with its Trinity, is a compromise with polytheism; Hegel even designates Islam as THE "religion of sublimity" at its purest, as the universalization of the Jewish monotheism:

Nicaragua set to outlaw abortion

Pro-life campaigners welcome the proposed ban on abortion

Nicaragua is expected to approve a law that outlaws all forms of abortion today.

Leaders from the Roman Catholic church have helped to draft legislation outlawing abortion in all cases, including cases of rape and abortion to save the pregnant woman's life.

1932: Belfast Outdoor Relief Strike

Strikers prepare to meet the police

The Falls and the Shankhill united, Catholics and Protestants fighting together. That is the story of the Outdoor Relief Strike launched by the unemployed of Belfast in 1932.


It is important today not only because it is a part of our history that has been denied space in the school books but also because it was a living demonstration that the sectarian barrier can be breached.

1970-1990: The war of counter-insurgency in El Salvador

Noam Chomsky on the ultra-violent war of the right-wing regime in El Salvador against grassroots resistance of workers, peasants and liberation theologists – socialist clergymen and women.

The crucifixion of El Salvador
For many years, repression, torture and murder were carried on in El Salvador by dictators installed and supported by the US government, a matter of no interest in the US. The story was virtually never covered. By the late 1970s, however, the government began to be concerned about a couple of things.

1978-1979: The Iranian Revolution

The Iranian revolution

A history and analysis of the revolution in which socialists aligned themselves with Islamists to overthrow the West-backed Shah.

Following the success of the revolution, the Islamists instituted a theocratic dictatorship and wiped out the workers' movement and the left.

A Proletarian critique of the Nation of Islam (by Melancholic Troglodytes)

This is a proletarian critique of the U.S. based Nation of Islam (NOI). With anything between 20,000 and 100,000 members and capable of engineering massive reactionary mobilizations, the Nation represents a significant counter-revolutionary force. The pamphlet looks at NOI's history and evolution, the way it exploits its membership and its promotion of anti-working class, sexist, homophobic and racist ideology. Melancholic Troglodytes hope this text will encourage further analysis of NOI, religion and race from a class perspective.

0400-2000: Northern Ireland - Is it a religious conflict?

Author's note; this is an expanded version of a talk given to the Brecon Political and Theological Discussion Group on Thursday 28th October, 2004. Alternatively it may be read as a greatly condensed version of my book, Ulster Presbyterianism.

First union for Japanese temple workers

A buddhist monk from the Zenkoji temple in Nagano has formed the first ever union for temple workers in Japan.

The following slightly edited report is from the Australian:

An aggrieved monk and his band of truculent acolytes have formed the first Japanese union for temple workers.

The fledgling union, comprising a handful of monks and other workers from the famous Zenkoji temple in Nagano, is sending a chilling message to Buddhist priests across Japan.

Lend a hand: Starbucks engaging in religious persecution of IWW barista

For the second time in as many months, Starbucks management has kicked Starbucks Workers Union member Suley Ayala out of the workplace for wearing her modest Pentagram necklace.

Religious Discrimination
Ms. Ayala is a practicing Wiccan and as a religious observance never takes off the necklace. She wore the necklace at Starbucks without interruption for three years until the company started harassing her after she and a group of her co-workers went public as members of the Starbucks Workers Union on November 18, 2005.

The Trouble with Islam

Over 130 years ago the anarchist Micheal Bakunin wrote "I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him." Writing of the Christian churches in Europe, he said "In talking to us of God they propose, they desire, to elevate us, emancipate us, ennoble us, and, on the contrary, they crush and degrade us.

Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity - Engels

published May 4-11, 1882 in Sozialdemokrat

In Berlin, on April 13, a man died who once played a role as a philosopher and a theologian, but was hardly heard of for years, only attracting the attention of the public from time to time as a "literary eccentric". Official theologians, including Renan, wrote him off and, therefore, maintained a silence of death about him. And yet he was worth more than them all and did more than all of them in a question which interests us Socialists, too: the question of the historical origin of Christianity.

On the History of Early Christianity - Engels

From Die Neue Zeit Vol. 1, 1894-95, pp. 4-13 and 36-43 ONLINE VERSION: Translated by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, USSR, 1957 from the newspaper copy. Transcribed for the Internet by director@marx.org.

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The God Pestilence

Among all mental diseases which man has systematically inoculated into his cranium, the religious pest is the most abominable.

Can a Muslim Be an Indian? - Gyanendra Pandey

Can a Muslim Be an Indian?
GYANENDRA PANDEY
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