Abstract
The article is based on a marxist methodological approach to religion. However Marx's thought is not considered to be a fixed inheritance, but rather a dynamic scientific method for analysing social reality, religion included. In the first part of the article, the author views religion as a form of social consciousness, bringing about the question of subjectivity. The differences in religious representations are related to the various forms of consciousness. This leads to the second part of the article, devoted to the social effects of the religious forms of social consciousness: representa tions, ethics, motivations for collective action. The article aims to show that the ambivalent social character of religious representa tions is related to the existence (adoption or rejection) of a social analysis as a mediation between social reality and the religious interference.