of the nineteenth century when it was legal. Opium was not only a narcotic
but it was used for medicinal purposes (Marx himself used opium). It was a
source of profit and a cause of conflict (the opium wars and the temperance
movement) (McKinnon 2005). Marx expresses a two-way relationship between
religiosity and suffering which is dialectical. Religious suffering is “an expres-
sion of real suffering” and a protest against it (Marx 1992[1844]:244). If this
is true, then religion arises as a response to suffering and should help to alle-
viate the experience of it but not necessarily the conditions that cause it. But
how do we measure suffering? Some suffering may have direct economic
causes while other suffering may be due to illness or psychological factors
that are not directly caused by socioeconomic factors.
One of the major contributions that Max Weber (who, along with Marx
and Freud, is another theoretical foundation of critical theory) makes to this
discussion is that the underprivileged have a greater need for salvation. “Since,
every need of salvation is an expression of some distress, social or economic
oppression is an effective source of salvation beliefs, though by no means the
exclusive source” (Weber 1978:491). Social and economic oppression are one
of the sources of the belief in salvation. The upper classes use religion to legit-
imize their own position and have less of a need for salvation. From this, we
can derive the hypothesis that the lower the socio-economic status, the stronger
beliefs one would have in salvation. This may translate into the lower the
income, the greater the belief in the afterlife.
Freud thought that religion was a form of “compulsive neurosis” (Freud
1991:20). Childhood traumatic experiences, which have been forgotten and
repressed, are the cause of this neurosis (Freud 1939:91). Freud suggests that
similar to the psychological history of the individual, the origins of religion
are the result of a primeval collective traumatic experience, which is no longer
conscious. Religion is a form of collective neurosis, which is a result of the
oedipal guilt, which the son feels in murdering the father (Freud 1939:101–102).
While some of this is highly speculative and has a fictitious quality, what
remains relevant is the hypothesis that religion is a response to trauma.
Aside from the classics, contemporary sociologists have discussed the rela-
tionship between economic and psychological stress, and religiosity. Stark
and Bainbridge (1985) in their pendulum theory of secularization argue that
due to the secularizing effects of wealth, sects, which become institutional-
ized into churches, move from a state of higher tension with this world to a
state of lower tension. Higher tension churches are lower down on the Socio-
Economic Scale than lower tension churches. Roof and McKinney (1987) in
344 • David Gay, Warren S. Goldstein, and Anna Campbell Buck