In their different ways , then , Freud and Marx both believed that religion was a provocation of insight , a stimulus to research .sx This provocative power lay in the enigmatic or deceptive character of religion , as a mystification or a self-deceiving transposition from an area of truth to an area of illusion .sx They both believed that in certain respects religion held the key to culture , it was the test case for the interpretation of industrial and cultural phenomena .sx Although Marx and Freud believed in and practised the study of religion they were contemptuous of religious education .sx This fact need not surprise us .sx The religious education which they knew was little more than a tame , domesticating activity of the religious communities , a mere transmission of religious doctrine often in the context of repetition and compulsion .sx It had few of the marks of intellectual penetration and criticism which Marx and Freud themselves brought to religion , and was , indeed , the very epitome of the mystification and obsessiveness which they deplored .sx Nevertheless , there are some respects in which we may think of both these great founders of the social sciences as being religious educators .sx Freud , for example , liked to think of himself as being similar to Moses , leading the Israel of an emancipated humanity forward to the promised land free of inhibitions guided by the laws of psycho-analysis ( Meissner , 1984) .sx He was undoubtedly a great teacher , and took some of the models for his teaching activity from his own Jewish background .sx In the case of Marx , we can at least see how he drew much of his illustrative material from religion .sx Several times in Capital we find the dry humour of these analogies being used with considerable effect ( Marx , 1957 , pp .sx 41 , 53 , 75 , 233 , 355 , 737 , 779) .sx Religious educators have often been urged to model themselves on Jesus ( Hubery , 1965 ; Jeffreys , 1969) .sx The literature extolling the virtues of Marx and Freud as models for the profession is rather less extensive but perhaps its hour is come ( Preiswerk , 1987) .sx For the fact is that while Marx and Freud despised religious education , they at the same time laid the foundations upon which it may be reformulated .sx The influence of the two masters of suspicion upon the social sciences lies first in their creation of this particular kind of critical approach .sx Jurgen Habermas divides the sciences into three groups :sx the sciences of measurement such as the physical sciences , those of interpretation such as the humanities , history and sociology , and finally the sciences of emancipation .sx The first group seek for explanation , the second group for understanding and the third group for liberation .sx In the third group Habermas places Marxist economics and Freudian psycho - analysis ( Habermas , 1971) .sx It is in this third group I would like to place a reformulated religious education .sx The place of religious education amongst the disciplines lies within the social sciences , and here it is one of the disciplines of emancipation .sx Freud and Marx , of course , believed that religion was that from which one needed to be emancipated .sx They did not see religion as being in itself an emancipatory discipline , although as we have seen the ground work they laid for the critical study of religion has prepared for this insight .sx It is religious education which must take up this ambiguity and must proclaim itself as both subject and object of the emancipatory process ; it looks upon religion as both disease and antidote , both bane and blessing .sx But before developing this in a little more detail , I must pause to consider the mission of religious education .sx It is time to reclaim the word mission , taken in the first place from the homeland of religion , and made to sit down beside the alien waters of Babylon and sing strange songs in the world of enterprise culture .sx The mission of religious education is first to communicate an understanding of religion to those who are not religious , secondly , to communicate an understanding of themselves to those who are religious , and finally , to communicate to all its students , both adults and children , the benefits or the gifts of religious studies .sx In all of these three tasks , which together comprise its mission , religious education can be informed by the disciplines of suspicion .sx In communicating an understanding of religion , it must point out the ambiguity , the double-edged nature of religion .sx In communicating a self-understanding to those who are religious , it must cope with the way in which religion both deceives and infantalises , together with the way in which religion may empower and recreate .sx In communicating the gifts of the study of religion to everyone , religious education will pass on a wide range of skills and benefits , not all of which need necessarily be in themselves religious ( Grimmit et al. , 1991) .sx Let us see how the social sciences may create the foundations of such a religious education within the context of modernity .sx The work of Karl Marx in understanding the significance of religion for society was brilliant but limited in its scope .sx Although he described religion as the " general theory of the world " that is , the world of human relations , the social world , and as its " encyclopaedic compendium , its logic in popular form " ( Marx , 1963 , p. 43 ) religion and the study of religion continued to occupy but a marginal place in his work .sx This must be attributed to the impact upon his systematic thought of the mystification theory of religion which he adopted from eighteenth century enlightenment rationalism ( Larrain , 1979) .sx He remained influenced by the 'psychology of interest' view of religion which suggested that religion was a cloak serving the interests of a section of society .sx He never thus advanced to a full-scale sociological understanding of religion , important though his work is as a bridge between the psychology and the sociology of religion .sx The purpose of religion , in the view of Marx , was precisely to mystify , to numb the consciousness , to veil reality , to offer a consoling hope , a comforting illusion to oppressed people .sx That oppressed people should need to find such comfort , should look for consolation from such a source , was in the view of Marx highly significant , indeed symptomatic of a whole structure of injustice .sx Nevertheless , religion itself possessed no particular function in society as a whole .sx Its role was limited to being a worn blanket which the weary body of suffering humanity could pull up over itself .sx That religion could be much more than this , that it could become the very foundation for an entire society , that it could be the content for a total ideology of society did not seem to occur to Marx , and this is why it remains somewhat marginal in his thought .sx It remains a part of his contribution to the psychology of politics , and particularly to the psychology of domination .sx We must go on to Emile Durkheim to find a conception of religion which views it as sufficiently powerful to carry the entire weight of a society .sx Religion consists of " beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community all those who adhere to them .sx Religion is thus an eminently collective thing " ( Durkheim , 1915 , p. 47) .sx Durkheim illustrated this by studies of the structure of pre-European Australian society .sx By studying the nature of religion in primal society we gain an insight into its whole character .sx The concept of society and that of divinity are different forms of the concept of totality .sx Religion is thus based upon and expressive of the total nature of our lives in society .sx Karl Marx was interested in the structure of industrial society and in understanding the causes which had led to it , whereas Durkheim in the work we have been considering was interested in pre-European if not prehistorical society .sx Marx studied a society which was deeply divided and saw in religion a factor or an aspect of that division ; Durkheim studied societies which were totalitarian in their religiosity , societies based upon cult and myth rather than upon economic and occupational distinctions .sx In these primal societies , religion does not play a role on this side or that because there are no sides , only many complex social institutions all based upon the fundamental distinction between the sacred and the profane .sx In modern societies religion has lost this integrating force , and the occupational group has taken its place .sx It would be possible for religion to come down out of the heavens and from the world beyond death so as to occupy again its primal place but that would require criticism of religion , and religion itself would prevent such criticism ( Durkheim , 1951 , pp .sx 374 ) .sx In the earlier work of Durkheim we find religion as a sort of tribal collectivity in which there is no access to alternative world views .sx Human beings are social .sx There is no alternative to society and thus no alternative to that religion which is the fibre of society .sx This is the truth of religion and in this sense every fundamental religion is true ( Durkheim , 1915 , p. 3) .sx At the same time , such societies are bound together in a sort of collective falsehood , a false consciousness in which believers mistake the essence of their religion ( which is society ) for something else , something other than society .sx We may describe this united social/religious world view as being 'non - dialectical' , as possessing no quality which permits a dialectic to take place .sx Thus the primal religious society as described by Durkheim is the very opposite of the plural societies which characterise modernity .sx For Marx , religion is a hindrance to the unification of a just society ; it is not only part of the antagonistic structure of society but acts so as to conceal from those who suffer most from the divisions of society the very nature of that antagonism .sx Religion is thus a manifestation of social division which functions in a way so as to stupefy people .sx This element of making people slightly mad is also found in Durkheim's description , but the madness does not matter because it is not antagonistic .sx Everyone is equally slightly mad .sx No-one notices , there is no-one outside the group who can take notice .sx In Marx , on the other hand , the stupefying effect of religious belief upon the masses is all too visible to the discerning critic .sx It thus becomes an abomination , an outrage .sx We have now seen that Marx , Freud and Durkheim regard religion as having an intrinsic connection with madness , but in different ways .sx For Marx religion is a collective mystification , in Durkheim a collective effervescence and in Freud a collective neurosis .sx These contrasts take on particular relevance when we try to put them together so as to create a theory for an emancipative religious education .sx The techniques used for the study of religion are often the same but the results are different .sx Some of the techniques which Marx used in his study of ideologies are similar to those used by Freud ( Freud , 1950) .sx Like ideologies , dreams invert reality , so that what we ourselves have created appears to come to us as a given , from the outside .sx The creative , constructive factors change places with the super-human , transcendent factors so that although people believe they have been made by the Gods the truth is that their Gods have been made by them .sx Interpretative techniques such as condensation and displacement are used by Marx in his analysis of the mystery of the commodity and by Freud in his dream analysis .sx Freud's interpretation of dreams , however , is unlike Marx's interpretation of social ideologies in this respect :sx Freud seems to have little or no interest in how these distortions and fantasies function against the interests of the poor whereas this was the major interest of Karl Marx .sx So it is that Freud speaks of " repression " where Marx speaks of " alienation" ; Freud diagnoses the sickness of the individual whereas Marx diagnoses the function of the illusions held by the poor ; Freud deals with the place of religion in the divided life of the guilty individual whereas Marx deals with the place of religion in the divided structure of an oppressive society .sx Durkheim , on the other hand , deals with religion in a unified society , a society unified by a religion which is false , yet innocent in its falsehood .sx