A história social das religiões e as contribuições teórico-metodológicas de E. P. Thompson

Abstract

In Thompson’s (2021) analysis of “dissidence”, the dual character of the religious phenomenon is revealed: its social role of legitimating the established society, but also of criticizing and protesting against this very society. For a long time, there was a certain consensus among Marxist researchers that religion was “the opium of the people”. However, the bearing of different religious groups, disconnected from the Anglican Church in England during the second half of the 18th century, demonstrated that such a theoretical approach is insufficient and even erroneous. Thus, the present article aims to discuss the Edward Palmer Thompson’s theoretical and methodological contributions (1924-1993) to the understanding of the social and political implications in religious phenomenon based on the class struggle. Hence, this paper is divided into two sections. At first, the general assumptions of the “Marxist sociology of religion” and the English historian’s analytical perspective on the religious phenomenon are discussed in the first section, as opposed to a mechanistic view of the “reflection theory”. Through the following section, the themes related to the religious field are examined in the work “The Formation of the English Working Class”, as well as the theoretical and methodological contributions to the Social History of Religions.