Warren S. Goldstein
Introduction: Marx, Critical Theory, and Religion:
A Critique of Rational Choice
The Sociology of Religion has had several frame-
works guiding its analysis including functionalism,
interpretive sociology, phenomenology, symbolic
interactionism and now rational choice theory.
Marxism has tended to ignore religion, assuming
that it would eventually disappear even though
Marxism itself retained theological elements. This
collection of essays brings together a group of schol-
ars who use frameworks provided by Marx and
Critical Theory to analyze religion. Our goal is to
establish a critical theory of religion within the soci-
ology of religion, as an alternative to rational choice.
In doing so,it engages in a critique of the positivism,
uncritical praise of the market (neoconservativism)
and one-dimensional conception of rationality of the
rational choice theory of religion.
This edited volume comes out of a special issue
of the journal Critical Sociology(Volume 31:1–2, 2005)
on Religion and Marxism. All of the authors were
asked to revise their articles for the edited volume
making them fit more into the framework of a crit-
ical theory of religion as an alternative to rational
choice. Some of the authors revised their articles, a
few submitted entirely new articles, and a few new
authors signed on.
The critical theory of religion has the promise of
providing an alternative to mainstream approaches
