The Aquila Report

Your independent source for news and commentary from and about conservative, orthodox evangelicals in the Reformed and Presbyterian family of churches

Corem Deo Pastor's Conference 2024
  • Biblical
    and Theological
  • Churches
    and Ministries
  • People
    in the News
  • World
    and Life News
  • Lifestyle
    and Reviews
    • Books
    • Movies
    • Music
  • Opinion
    and Commentary
  • General Assembly
    and Synod Reports
    • ARP General Synod
    • EPC General Assembly
    • OPC General Assembly
    • PCA General Assembly
    • PCUSA General Assembly
    • RPCNA Synod
    • URCNA Synod
  • Subscribe
    to Weekly Email
  • Biblical
    and Theological
  • Churches
    and Ministries
  • People
    in the News
  • World
    and Life News
  • Lifestyle
    and Reviews
    • Books
    • Movies
    • Music
  • Opinion
    and Commentary
  • General Assembly
    and Synod Reports
    • ARP General Synod
    • EPC General Assembly
    • OPC General Assembly
    • PCA General Assembly
    • PCUSA General Assembly
    • RPCNA Synod
    • URCNA Synod
  • Subscribe
    to Weekly Email
  • Search
Home/Featured/Identity Politics, Opium of the People

Identity Politics, Opium of the People

Identitarianism represents not the heart of our heartless world so much as that same world’s unforgiving heartlessness pushed to its ruthless and destructive practical conclusion.

Written by Carl R. Trueman | Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Identity politics, unlike Christianity, is not the heart of a heartless world. Far from it. Christianity calls out sin and demands repentance; but it has grace and forgiveness at its heart. The shrill voice of identity politics screams for repentance, yet it presumes that no actual act of repentance will ever be sufficient. It offers neither grace nor forgiveness. That is because total victory, not reconciliation, is the real name of the game. Even Marx recognized in Christianity the heart of the heartless world. 

 

Identity politics is the new religion of the United States. Some will dissent from this claim. There are those who simply don’t want to see how deep-seated the factionalism of the public square now is. And there are those who have a vested interest in minimizing the righteous religiosity of what is commonly called “wokeness.” But in its demand for full conformity, its rituals and liturgies, and its unfailing ability to sniff out heresy, it resembles nothing so much as a religious cult. And this, ironically, is where the man whom many consider the founder of the feast, Karl Marx, may prove useful to those of us wondering how to respond.

Of all Marx’s sayings, the best known is surely that religion “is the opium of the people.” Yet anyone who has read Marx knows that he did not think in sound bites. The silliness of Twitter, with its economy of characters, disregard for context, and superficiality of content, would not have suited his Hegelian disquisitions on the world. This opium claim is no exception; and set in its context, in the introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, its meaning is enriched and its content rendered helpful in thinking about the current civic religion of the U.S.

Quoted in full, the paragraph reads as follows:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. 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.

It is clear from this that Marx has a somewhat more subtle approach to religion than is often attributed to him. In his view, religion may be false, but it is a function of something real. Religious people may be putting their faith in nonsense, but they do so because they are truly suffering. We might say that, while Marx has no sympathy for religion, he has deep sympathy for the poor people who put their trust in it.

This passage strikes me as helpful for understanding today’s identity politics. The temptation on both sides of the political divide is to dismiss the identity politics of the other side as self-interested special pleading, rooted in trivial concerns: the accidental use of a wrong word; the tantrum of somebody who isn’t getting his way; a power play by an ideological bully. And certainly there is much truth here. As I noted in my last column, ideas such as critical race theory have provided easy career paths for populists and professors alike. But we should beware of reducing the whole of identity politics to the self-serving ressentiment of those who want a turn in the limelight. Surely it is more. For many it is the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.

Read More

Related Posts:

  • A Godless Great Awakening
  • I Refuse to Say "I Identify As" — Here’s Why
  • Identity Politics on the Right
  • Repentance and Forgiveness
  • America’s Not-So-Great Awakening

Subscribe, Follow, Listen

  • email-alt
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • apple-podcasts
  • anchor
Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service
Reformation Worship Conference 2023

Archives

Books

Special

God is Holy
  • About
  • Advertise Here
  • Contact Us
  • Donations
  • Email Alerts
  • Leadership
  • Letters to the Editor
  • Principles and Practices
  • Privacy Policy

Important:

Free Subscription

Aquila Report Email Alerts

Special

Letter of Jude
  • About
  • Advertise Here
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Principles and Practices
  • RSS Feed
  • Subscribe to Weekly Email Alerts
Providence Christian College - visit

DISCLAIMER: The Aquila Report is a news and information resource. We welcome commentary from readers; for more information visit our Letters to the Editor link. All our content, including commentary and opinion, is intended to be information for our readers and does not necessarily indicate an endorsement by The Aquila Report or its governing board. In order to provide this website free of charge to our readers,  Aquila Report uses a combination of donations, advertisements and affiliate marketing links to  pay its operating costs.

Return to top of page

Website design by Five More Talents · Copyright © 2023 The Aquila Report · Log in