Ideology

Ideology and religion

Ideologies, in fact, are sometimes spoken of as if they belonged to the same logical category as religions. Both are assuredly in a certain sense “total” systems, concerned at the same time with questions of truth and questions of conduct; but the differences between ideologies and religions are perhaps more important than the similarities. A religious theory of reality is constructed in terms of a divine order and is seldom, like that of the ideologist, centred on this world alone. A religion may present a vision of a just society, but it cannot easily have a practical political program. The emphasis of religion is on faith and worship; its appeal is to inwardness and its aim the redemption or purification of the human spirit. An ideology speaks to the group, the nation, or the class. Some religions acknowledge their debt to revelation, whereas ideology always believes, however mistakenly, that it lives by reason alone. Both, it may be said, demand commitment, but it may be doubted whether commitment has ever been a marked feature of those religions into which a believer is inducted in infancy.

Even so, it is in ... (200 of 6,750 words)