Flagging enrollments. Disappearing majors. Closed departments. The academic study of religion is in trouble. No Bosses, No Gods argues that Karl Marx is essential for reversing course--but it will take letting go of what most scholars think they know about him.

The book's first half draws on the scholarship of international specialists--as well as new translations of the original German texts--to present Marx the anti-theorist, a political journalist deeply skeptical about what happens when the professoriate sits down to "theorize" about social worlds. The second half appeals to this modified portrait of Marx and charts a new course beyond both actually existing religious studies and contemporary genealogies of the religion category. The result, perhaps, is an academic study of religion worth having in the twenty-first century.