Religious institutions survive by keeping elites and masses doctrinally unified

Evidence

The strength of religions, and of the Catholic church in particular, has lain, and still lies, in the fact that they feel very strongly the need for the doctrinal unity of the whole mass of the faithful and strive to ensure that the higher intellectual stratum does not get separated from the lower. The Roman church has always been the most vigorous in the struggle to prevent the “official” formation of two religions, one for the “intellectuals” and the other for the “simple souls”. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1186

Categorization

• XREF: Connects forward to Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and to how ruling ideas cement a social bloc — central to Islamophobia readings on how common sense and elite discourse interlock.