Antonio Gramsci on Faith, Religion and the Entanglement of Reason/Emotion: Insights for Religious Education in Western Multi-Religious Societies

Abstract

This article argues that Antonio Gramsci’s affective and materialist conception of faith has crucial implications for theory and research in religious education, especially with regard to the affective dimensions of religious controversies and sensibilities in Western multi-religious societies. By emphasizing the role of emotion in faith, Gramsci speaks to the affective turn’s recent attempts to foster a critical, contextual and productive engagement with “religious affects.” Gramsci’s conception of faith offers novel insights to scholars and educators in religious education that help overcome problematic dichotomies between emotion/reason and secularity/religiosity that are often embedded in public discourses on religious controversies.