Institutionalized religion can transform from a revitalizing force into a narcotic for the masses.

Evidence

But here again it is naive Christianity that is being referred to: not Jesuitised Christianity, which has become a pure narcotic for the popular masses. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1211

Categorization

• XREF: Connects forward to Marx’s ‘opium of the people’ formulation and to how the Islamophobia literature treats dominant orthodoxy as an anaesthetizing force versus more vital heterodoxies.
• DEFINE: Defines the distinction between ‘naive’ lived Christianity and ‘Jesuitised’ institutional orthodoxy as narcotic — a conceptual polarity (vital belief vs. narcotic orthodoxy) worth carrying forward.