Problems in the Psychology of Religious Sectarianism

Abstract

Religious phenomena are characterized by the fact that they are saturated with psychological factors and involve the world of man's emotional experience. Engels wrote that religion exists as a direct - i.e., emotional - form of the attitude of human beings toward the alien forces that rule over them…. (1) Lenin devoted a great deal of attention to the role of negative emotions in the shaping of religious notions, and pointed to the socially determined nature of these emotions. He begins his famous description of the social roots of religion in capitalist society with the ancient saying, Fear created the gods; then he continues: Fear of the blind power of capital, which is blind because it cannot be anticipated by the masses of the people, and which at every step in the life of the proletarian and petty businessman threatens and brings ‘sudden’… ‘unexpected,’ ‘accidental’ ruin, destruction, transformation into a beggar, a pauper, a prostitute, death by starvation - this is the root of religion today t...