Ask Lemmygrad

I was raised in (and was devout about until age 27 or so) white evangelical Christianity in the US. From that, I struggled to view “religion” in a broad sense other than through that lens. I held on to a lot of anger and in some ways was an edgy internet atheist. Marxism helped me understand base and superstructure. It helped me understand how the religion I was raised in grew out of settler colonialism, white supremacy, and as a way to maintain the meager privileges that the bourgeoisie grant upon the reactionary, white working class. In other words, the specific material and historical circumstances of the time and place I lived, driven by a specific mode of production. And it was those things that I was really angry at (well, for the most part. Beliefs around eternal torment still bother me to this day). Also seeing how faith and religion has brought encouragement and hope to the people of Gaza also helped me approach the concept of religion with nuance.

Ultimately religion can be a force for good or bad, it just depends on the material elements that underlie it in a specific context.