“Religion is said to have emancipated human beings on the one hand but it also alienates them on the other.” Bring out the paradoxical functions religion plays in a modern secular society. (1990)
The statement captures a lasting tension in the sociology of religion. Karl Marx, following Ludwig Feuerbach, saw religion as alienation: human powers projected onto God and then worshipped as alien. Yet religion has also inspired freedom, dignity and resistance. In a modern secular society, where religion is differentiated from the state and becomes a matter of choice, both faces persist, often within the same tradition.
Religion as emancipation
- Meaning and agency: Max Weber showed that religions answer the problem of theodicy (why suffering exists). His Protestant Ethic (1905) traced how religious ethics freed conduct from traditionalism. Peter L. Berger calls religion a “sacred canopy” that protects individuals from meaninglessness (anomy).
- Sacredness of the individual: Émile Durkheim foresaw a modern “cult of the individual” in which human dignity itself becomes sacred. This moral root runs under human rights and secular constitutions.
- Liberation of the oppressed: B. R. Ambedkar‘s Navayana Buddhism (1956) offered Dalits an exit from a caste-sanctioned identity. Martin Luther King Jr. drew on Christian prophecy against racial segregation, and Latin American liberation theology read the Gospel as a call to free the poor.
- Reform from within: Sree Narayana Guru‘s slogan “one caste, one religion, one God for humankind” and Muslim women’s use of Quranic arguments against instant triple talaq, which the Supreme Court struck down in Shayara Bano (2017), show faith being turned against injustice.
- Psychological and social support: congregations, langars and faith-based welfare supply community in an individualised, anomic urban society.
Religion as alienation
- Illusory happiness: Marx called religion “the sigh of the oppressed creature” and “the opium of the people”, a consolation that dulls the will to change real conditions.
- Sacralised hierarchy: Ambedkar (Annihilation of Caste, 1936) held that scriptural authority made caste feel divinely ordained. Restrictions on women’s entry and inheritance are still defended in religion’s name. The Sabarimala dispute after 2018 set gender-equality claims against devotees’ claims of tradition.
- Authoritarian religion: Erich Fromm (Psychoanalysis and Religion, 1950) contrasted humanistic religion, which develops human powers, with authoritarian religion, which demands submission. Fundamentalism is the modern form of the latter.
- Division: in India, the Pew Research Center’s 2021 survey found that 36% of Hindus would not accept a Muslim neighbour, and that most Indians want to stop inter-religious marriage. Religion both binds people and separates them.
- Commodification: godmen, prosperity gospels and paid rituals turn the sacred into a market good, which Bryan S. Turner links to consumer culture.
Why the paradox sharpens in secular modernity
- Thomas Luckmann (The Invisible Religion, 1967) showed religion becoming privatised. Freed from church control it can empower personal spirituality, or it can be captured by identity politics.
- Jürgen Habermas calls today’s condition “post-secular”: secular states must accommodate religious citizens, and religious voices must translate their claims into public reason.
Conclusion
Emancipation and alienation are not two different religions but two uses of the same symbols. Religion alienates when it is fused with power and closed to reinterpretation. It emancipates when believers claim its ethical core against domination. A constitutional secular order that protects both freedom of religion and freedom within religion allows the emancipatory side to prevail.